ABSTRACT
Introduction: Disintegrant are substances added to pharmaceutical tablets to promote their breakdown into smaller particles when they come in contact with body fluid, facilitating drug dissociation and absorption. Pectin , a complex polysaccharide, abundant in plant cells have shown great potential in tablet production as a fast acting disintegrant.
This study offers insights into the physical characteristics and performance attributes of ciprofloxacin tablets formulated from pectin extracted from grapefruit peel Citrus paradisi using varying Concentrations of pectin as disintegrant.
Method: Grapefruit, Citrus paradisi peels were obtained from a local market in Benin City . the peels were meticulously cleaned and chopped into small bits.The pectin was extracted using the hot acid extraction method from the fresh peels of Citrus paradisi. The extracted pectin was then used to formulate fast disintegrating tablets of Ciprofloxacin. The Ciprofloxacin granules were prepared by wet granulation technique at varying Concentrations of 5%, 7.5%, 10%, 12.5% , 15% respectively intragranularly. Similar procedure was carried out for sodium starch glycolate and maize starch B.P which served as the standards in the formulation. The resulting granules were evaluated for their micrometric properties and compressed into tablets which were further studied for their physicochemical properties and disintegration as well as dissolution profiles.
Result : The results obtained from the study shows that formulation F1 (containing sodium starch glycolate), F7 (containing maize starch B.P) and F2 to F6 (containing various Concentrations of extracted pectin) had excellent flow properties. The granules were free-flowing and highly compressible. The resulting tablets had uniform weights with a weight variation of less than 2%. The tablet hardness ranged from 8.5 to 11.5kpa while the percentage friability was from 0.204-0.466% which is well within the BP specification of not more than 1%. The disintegration result showed that the various formulation of Ciprofloxacin tablet with pectin (F2,F3,F4,F5,F6) disintegrated faster than that with maize starch BP but much slower than that of sodium starch glycolate F6 had the fastest time of 8.42minutes. The invitro release profiles for all batches were relatively comparable and did not show much differences in their release kinetics
Conclusion: It can be concluded from the study that pectin extracted from Citrus paradisi ( grapefruit) peel has a very great potential for use as a prompt acting disintegrant but further evaluation of it's disintegrant properties in the powdered form should be explored.
