Design, Development and In-vitro Evaluation of Intragastric Buoyant Tablets of Pioglitazone Hydrochloride

Drugs that have narrow absorption window in the gastro-intestinal tract (GIT) will have poor absorption. For these drugs, gastro-retentive drug delivery systems offer the advantages in prolonging the gastric emptying time. Floating and sustained release tablets are developed by using a combination of hydrophilic polymer (Hydroxypropyl methylcellulose) and effervescent substance (Sodium bicarbonate and Citric acid) in different ratios. Percentage swelling, in vitro drug release, floating lag time and total duration of floating was conducted in 0.1N HCl (pH 1.2). The tablets showed acceptable physicochemical properties. The drug release of optimized formulation (F5) follows the Higuchi kinetic model, and the mechanism is found to be non-fickian according to Korsmeyer-Peppas (‘n’ value is 0.495). The similarity factor (f2) of formulation (F5) is found to be 74.66. Hence, formulation F5 was found to be optimized formulation out of all the floating matrix tablets of Pioglitazone Hydrochloride (F1-F9).