Acta Pharm. 57 (2007) 73-86

full paper

Original research paper

Influence of process variables on release properties of
paracetamol tablets

GBENGA ALEBIOWU¹* and OLUDELE ADELANWA ITIOLA²

galebiowu@yahoo.co.uk; galebiowu@rediffmail.com

¹Department of Pharmaceutics, Faculty of Pharmacy, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria

²Department of Pharmaceutics and Industrial Pharmacy, Faculty of Pharmacy, University Of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria

Accepted October 19, 2006

A 2³ factorial experimental design has been used to quantitatively study individual and interaction effects of the nature of binder (N), binder concentration (c) and relative density of tablet (d) on the disintegration time (DT) and dissolution times, t₁, t₅₀ and t₉₀, of paracetamol tablet formulations. The factorial design was also used to study the quantitative effects of pregelatinization of starch binders on these parameters, i.e. N, c and d. In general, the most common ranking of the individual effects on DT, t₁, t₅₀ and t₉₀ for native/native, pregelatinized/pregelatinized and native/pregelatinized starch binder formulations was c > d > N. For the interaction effects, the most common ranking was N–c > C–d > N–d for all the formulations. The results generally showed that c can considerably affect DT, t₁, t₅₀ and t₉₀ of the tablets.

Keywords: pregelatinization, starch, sorghum, plantain, disintegration, dissolution