New Easily Swallowed Tablets with Slippery Coating for the Antihypertensive Drug Valsartan

Abstract

Different tablet dosage forms were prepared to be administered for patients with dysphagia (swallowing difficulties) like buccal, sublingual and orodispersible tablets, however, they possesses certain constrains like taste masking difficulties, limitations in drug and dose selection and friability. Hence, in an attempt to overcome these constrains, a new easily swallowed immediate release tablets containing (160mg) Valsartan were prepared, and designed to be slippery upon contact with saliva giving an easy swallowing of the intact tablet (without water) with efficient taste masking effect, thus, they called Oroslippery tablets (OSTs). Core tablets were prepared by direct compression using different superdisintegrants, followed by dipping in special coating dispersion containing different proportion of kollicoat IR (film former) and xanthan gum (slipperiness inducer) at different coating levels. These OSTs were optimized for their physical properties, in-vitro disintegration and release in addition to in-vivo slipperiness and taste masking effect. It was found that F12 containing 6% crosscarmellose sodium double coated with 15% kollicoat IR and 0.3% xanthan gum possessed a good mechanical strength (hardness=5.69±0.58 Kg/cm2, friability=0.09%±0.79), suitable in-vivo slipperiness and taste masking times (8±1.45 and 58±2.18 seconds) respectively, with longer disintegration time (5.57±1.36 minutes) but similar release profile to the commercial conventional tablet Diovan® with similarity factor (f2= 68.4±1.07) and difference factor (f1= 1.39± 0.95). Therefore, this study developed a new easily swallowed tablet with an efficient taste masking property, high loading capacity and adequate mechanical strength that can be used as an alternative to buccal, sublingual and orodispersible tablets.