FORMULATION AND EVALUATION OF METFORMIN HYDROCHLORIDE SUSTAINED RELEASE MATRIX TABLETS

Objective: Now a days as very few antidiabetic drugs are coming out of research and development and some existing drugs are showing several side effects when administered orally, multiple times in a day, hence change in the operation is a suitable and optimized way to make some drug more effective by slight alteration in the drug delivery. Matrix type drug delivery systems of an antidiabetic drug like Metformin Hydrochloride, is an interesting and promising option when developing an oral sustained release system Methods: An appropriately designed controlled release drug delivery system can be a major advance towards solving problems concerning the targeting of a drug to a specific organ or tissue and controlling the rate of drug delivery to the target sites. This research work is made in designing of sustained release dosage form of Metformin Hydrochloride by wet granulation method employing both Xanthan Gum and Hydroxy Propyl Methyl Cellulose (HPMC K4M) as a rate controlling polymer. Results: The development of oral sustained release systems has been a challenge to formulation scientists due to their inability to restrain and localize the system at targeted areas of the gastrointestinal tract. From all the formulation trial batches, formulation F7 shows the best results. It has been observed that HPMC K4M alone cannot give satisfactory drug release profile but the blend of HPMC K4M and Xanthan gum together give the best drug release kinetics. Conclusion: The drug release mechanism from the matrix tablets follows Fickian diffusion with first order kinetics. Thus, sustained release matrix tablets of metformin hydrochloride can be expected to reduce the frequency of administration and decrease the dose dependent side effects