Effect of Compression Force and Concentration of Superdisintigrant on Directly Compressed Tablets of Metformin HCl

Abstract

The present research work was to evaluate the effect of compression force and concentration of superdisintigrant on tableting properties of metformin HCl. Initially powder mixtures of drug, croscarmellose sodium (0.62% to 10% w/w) and microcrystalline cellulose PH-200 sufficient quantity were prepared and evaluate their pre-compression parameters of different formulation batches such as angle of repose, bulk density, tapped density, Hausner’s ratio and compressibility index. The prepared powder mixtures of different batches were compressed into tablet using hydraulic pellet press machine at two optimized compression forces (77 MPa and 154 MPa). The post compression parameters such as thickness, diameter, weight variation, hardness, friability, drug content, disintegration time and in-vitro drug release study of the prepared tablets were evaluated. FT-IR and DSC studies showed that no incompatibility of the selected drug with the selected excipients. At selected compression force (77 MPa) and increased concentration of superdisintigration (0.62% to 10% w/w) of formulations F1 to F5 indicated that, disintegration time were periodically decreased up to F3 (1.25% w/w croscarmellose sodium). When the concen-tration of superdisintigrant increased up to 10% showed that disintegration time were periodically increased. Similarly, at compression force 154 MPa there is increased in tablet hardness but this effect was less significant when the superdisintegrant concentration more than 1.25% w/w. The hardness and drug content of all the formulations were found to be 3.59 ± 0.23 to 4.85 ± 0.01 kg/cm2 and 97.89 ± 0.10% to 99.42 ± 0.03% respectively. The in-vitro drug release data suggested that drug release of all the formulations followed Higuchi’s kinetic (R> = 0.998). The release rate exponent values (n) suggested the mechanism of drug release followed Quasi-Fickian diffusion mechanism at compression force 77 MPa and anomalous diffusion mechanism at compression force 154 MPa, respectively.