FORMULATION AND EVALUATION OF GLIMEPIRIDE PATCHES FOR TRANSDERMAL DRUG DELIVERY

Abstract

Transdermal drug delivery has been accepted as a potential non-invasive route of drug administration, with advantages of prolonged therapeutic action, less side effect, easy use and improved patient compliance. “Glimepiride is an anti-diabetic drug with a shorter half life of ~5 hours, low bioavailability and extensive first pass metabolism due to these limitations required to maintain the therapeutic level it has chosen as transdermal drug delivery system.” The present study was to formulate and evaluate transdermal drug delivery system of Glimepiride using polymers such as HPMC & Eudragit RS100 by solvent casting technique. Central composite design (CCD) was applied by using design-expert to optimize composition of HPMC and ERS100 for Transdermal Drug Delivery. The prepared formulations were evaluated for different physicochemical characteristics like Weight Variation, Folding Endurance, Flatness, pH of patches, % Moisture Content, % Moisture uptake, % Elongation, % Drug Content & % Drug Release. The drug release characteristics of the formulation were studied in-vitro by using semi-permeable membrane. The in-vitro drug release plot “showed “ that the drug release followed zero order kinetics & Higuchi model, which was evidenced from the regression values. Based on the drug release and physicochemical values obtained from the formulation F₃ is considered as an optimized formulation which shows higher percentage of drug release (97.33±0.26% at 24 hour) with diffusion mediated mechanism. Korsmeyer-Peppas exponential plots shows fairly linear add, it is well supported by their regression coefficient values & slope value (n) were more than 1 which suggest that drug was released by Super Case-II transport. 

Key words: Transdermal Patches, Transdermal Drug Delivery, Glimepiride, Solvent Casting Method, Central Composite Design & Anti- Diabetic Patches.