Abstract
Pentazocine (PTZ) is a narcotic analgesic used to manage moderate to severe, acute and chronic pains. In this study, PTZ loaded Ethyl cellulose microsphere has been formulated for sustained release and improved bioavailability of PTZ. These microspheres were fabricated by oil in water emulsion solvent evaporation technique. A three factorial, three levels Box-Behnken design was applied to investigate the influence of different formulation components and process variables on the formulation response using the numeric approach through the design expert® software. All the formulations were characterized for the morphology, different physicochemical properties and the results were supported with the ANOVA analysis, three dimensional contour graphs and regression equations. The maximum percentage yield was 98.67% with 98% entrapment of PTZ. The mean particle size of the formulations ranges from 50–148μm, which directly relates to the concentration of polymer and inversely proportional to the stirring speed. SEM revealed the spherical shape of PTZ microspheres with porous structures. These are physically, chemically and thermally stable as confirmed through Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD) and thermal gravimetric (TG) analysis respectively. The microspheres provided a sustained release of the PTZ for more than 12 hours, following zero order with fickian and non fickian diffusion. The results indicate that prepared microspheres can be a potential drug delivery system (DDS) for the delivery of PTZ in the management of pains.
Highlights
Pain is an unpleasant sensory feeling associated with long term disability globally and regarded as the major health issue in society [1]
Pain is converted into chronic pain when it persists beyond the healing of the injury and the related inflammatory processes that usually persist for more than 3 months [4, 5]
All the solvents including dichloromethane (DCM), hydrochloric acid (HCl), sodium hydroxide and other solvents used were of analytical grade
Summary
Pain is an unpleasant sensory feeling associated with long term disability globally and regarded as the major health issue in society [1]. It is estimated that more than 21.5% of the total population was suffering from pain, including over 100 million patients in the USA and 14 million cases in the UK [2, 3]. Pain is an intricate physiological phenomenon, including various psychological and genetic origin described by various patients by their individual experiences. Acute pain often results from injury or disease and is the hostile, complicated, active physiological response to tissue trauma and various acute inflammatory processes. Pain management in cancer therapy is an indispensable aspect. Various strategies have been employed, but a wide consensus has been made on opioid base pharmacotherapy as first line strategy for treating moderate to severe pain with active diseases including cancer [7, 8]. Experimental models indicate that opioid analgesics regulate the perplexing variables to reduce experimental pain sensitivity across multiple stimulus modalities [9]
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