Taste masked sustained release tablet of metformin hydrochloride

Abstract

Sustained release formulation of metformin hydrochloride (MTHCL) presents significant challenges due to its poor inherent compressibility and high water solubility. Thus formulating MTHCL into sustained dosage form would provide slow release. But, it is bitter in taste and taste should be masked to formulate it in palatable form. So in the work undertaken, an attempt was made to sustained the release also to mask the bitter taste by complexation technique using strong cation-exchange resin, indion 244, 254 and 264 (Polyacrylic hydrogen with carboxylic functionality).The drug loading was optimized for mixing time, activation, pH, mode of mixing, drug:resin ratio and temperature.The resinate was evaluated for micromeritic properties, taste masking and characterized by X-Ray diffraction study and IR. Using resinate sustained release tablets were formulated using HPMC (K100M) and MCC (PH 102). The tablets were evaluated for hardness, thickness, friability, drug content, weight variation and in-vitro release. Tablets formulated (Batch B-9) provided sustained release over a period of time 10 hours with first order kinetics. The release of MTHCL from resinate controls the diffusion of drug molecules through the polymeric material into aqueous medium. The results showed that MTHCL was successfully taste masked and formulated into a sustained dosage form as an alternative to conventional tablet.