Shweta Pandey

There is a vast interest in the scientific community and drug industry to exploit various mucosal routes of delivering drugs, which are poorly absorbed after oral administration. Human rectum remains to be a relatively unexplored route of drug delivery despite its potential as a non- invasive route of drug administration. The presence of dense network of blood vessels has made the rectum an excellent route of drug delivery for both systemic and local effect. The present investigation was aimed to evaluating the possibility of using different surfactant i.e. Span 60 and 80, Tween 60 and 80 on the release rate of formulation for the development of rectal drug delivery system of paracetamol, an NSAIDs, to minimize the gastric irritation of the drug upon oral administration. Suppositories were formulated by fusion method & evaluated for their physicochemical characterization followed by in vitro evaluation through spectrophotometrically. Suppositories containing PEG 4000 with Tween 80 showed a better permeation of drug with faster dissolution rate in vitro than other formulations. The formulations were designed to overcome the risk of upper gastrointestinal complications such as stomach bleeding, and may cause kidney or liver damage. Suppositories are dosage forms for use in the unavoidable circumstances such as comatose, nauseous or vomiting.

Oral delivery is at this time the gold standard in the drug manufacturing where it is considered as the safest, most convenient and greatest economical method of drug delivery. One such problem can be solved in the novel drug delivery system by formulating “mouth dissolving tablets” (MDTs) which disintegrates or dissolves rapidly without water within few seconds in the mouth due to the action of superdisintegrant or maximizing pore structure in the formulation. Some tablets are designed to dissolve in saliva remarkably fast, within a few seconds, and are true fast-dissolving tablets. Others contain agents to enhance the rate of tablet disintegration in the oral cavity, and are more appropriately termed fast-disintegrating tablets, as they may take up to a minute to completely disintegrate. Mouth dissolving tablets are solid dosage forms containing drugs that disintegrate in the oral cavity within less than one minute leaving an easy-to-swallow residue. This is seen to affect about 35% of the general population and associated with a number of circumstances like Parkinsonism, mental disability, motion sickness, unconsciousness, unavailability of the water etc. Other groups that may experience problems using conventional oral dosage forms include the mentally ill, the developmentally disabled, and patients who are uncooperative, on reduced liquid-intake plans, or are nauseated. To overcome such difficulties, mouth dissolving tablets have been developed. The aim of this review article is to give an overview on desired characteristics, advantages, preparation techniques and patented technologies of FDTs formulation.