Sylvester O Eraga
,
Matthew I Arhewoh,
Odera C Unachukwu,
Magnus A Iwuagwu
For correspondence:- Sylvester Eraga Email: eragaso@uniben.edu Tel: +2348030884928
Published: 31 December 2015
Citation: Eraga SO, Arhewoh MI, Unachukwu OC, Iwuagwu MA. Investigation of the disintegration behaviour of paracetamol and metronidazole tablets in different beverages. J Sci Pract Pharm 2015; 2(1):23-27 doi: 10.47227/jsppharm.v2i1.6
© 2015 The author(s).
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Purpose: To assess how different beverage media impact the disintegration times of some commonly used solid oral dosage formulations namely, paracetamol and metronidazole uncoated tablets.
Methods: Ten different types of media comprising non-alcoholic beverages (orange juice, sparkling fruit juice, cola and lemon/lime soft drinks), alcoholic beverages of 5, 11 and 18 %v/v alcohol, malt drink and 0.1 N hydrochloric acid were compared with distilled water at 37 ± 1 °C in their disintegration times of paracetamol and metronidazole tablets.
Results: Disintegration time of paracetamol tablets was significantly retarded by the beverages with times ranging from 4.4 - 8.6 min as against 3.5 min in distilled water. Orange juice gave the highest retardation while the malt drink facilitated disintegration with times of 8.6 and 2.8 min respectively. Metronidazole tablets disintegration time was not significantly retarded by the beverages against a time of 1.1 min in distilled water except orange juice with a disintegration time of 4.2 min.
Conclusion: Although the effect on the disintegration times of the tablets by the different beverages did not result in times above compendial requirement of 15 min, care should be taken when replacing water with any beverage in ingesting tablet drug products especially those that are slow in disintegration.
