Rehab Tonse

Gout is a disease caused by the deposition of monosodium urate (MSU) crystals in tissue such as cartilage, synovial membranes, bones and skin which causes inflammation in the synovial tissue. Indomethacin is first line of drug used as NSAID for the treatment of Gout. The aim of this study was to encapsulate Indomethacin in ethyl cellulose microspheres and compare the efficiency of the formulated Indomethacin microspheres with the Marketed formulation. Indomethacin microspheres were prepared by solvent evaporation method. FTIR  studies revealed there was no significant interaction between the drug and polymer. Preformulation studies gave satisfactory results. SEM studies showed a spherical smooth microsphere average size of 10.4±3.04. The percentage entrapment efficiency and percentage drug release after 10 hours was found to be 82.97±1.6 % and 52.04±0.58 % respectively. The therapeutic effect of the Indomethacin microspheres was evaluated by the swelling of knee joints, joint range of motion and histologic analysis of MSU induced rat model. The prepared indomethacin microspheres showed effective prolong in the retention time of the drug in the intra articular cavity to 30 d which is more than that of the marketed formulation. Intra- articular injection of Indomethacin microspheres efficiently relieved inflammatory symptoms such as swelling index, joint range motion and suppressed inflammatory cell infiltration than the marketed formulation. Thus intra-articular injection of Indomethacin loaded microspheres proved to be a promising therapeutic method in the treatment of Gout.

The present study was aimed at the formulation of transdermal patches of flupirtine maleate containing different permeation enhancers. It acts indirectly as N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist and activates the K+ channels; thereby acts as a skeletal muscle relaxant. Flupirtine maleate transdermal patches are intended to provide localized effect. The patches were prepared by solvent evaporation technique, using polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) as the polymer whereas dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) and polyethylene glycol (PEG-400) as the permeation enhancers. Methanol was used as a solvent to dissolve the drug and glycerol was used as the plasticizer. These patches were evaluated for in vitro permeation, tensile strength, percent moisture absorption, drug content uniformity, film thickness, weight variation and folding endurance. All the patches showed extended release properties. Formulation FDD8 containing 8% polymer and 2% DMSO was found to be the optimized formulation on the basis of evaluation parameters. In vitro permeation release was found to be 95.71 ± 0.01% at the end of 12 h. As the concentration of DMSO increased, the release profile of drug was enhanced. This indicated that DMSO improved the release profile of flupirtine maleate when compared to PEG-400. The release kinetics of the transdermal patches followed Higuchi matrix model. The stability studies showed that all the optimized patches were stable during their study period. From the present study, it can be concluded that addition of DMSO yields good result to enhance the permeation of the drug.