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The purpose of the present study is to formulate and develop tablets dosage form containing metronidazole which has floating properties as a gastroretentive controlled-release drug delivery system to improve drug bioavailability. Different formulations of effervescence-forming floating systems were designed using HPMC K15M and Carbopol 934 as polymers and sodium bicarbonate and citric acid as gas-forming agents at different compositions. The micromeritic properties of the powder blend were studied. The prepared tablets were found to exhibit satisfactory physico-chemical characteristics, floating behaviour, swelling ability and drug dissolution studies which were carried out using 0.1M HCl at 37°C for 8 hours. The tablets were successfully prepared and showed sustained release of drug for eight hours. Thus the developed drug delivery system could provide an effective treatment in peptic ulcer disease.
INTRODUCTION
Oral route is the most convenient and extensively used route for drug administration. This route has high patient acceptability, primarily due to easy of administration. Oral route of administration has been received more attention in the pharmaceutical field because of the more flexibility in the designing of dosage form than drug delivery design for other routes. Most of the oral controlled drug delivery systems rely on diffusion, dissolution or combination of both mechanisms, to release the drug in a controlled manner to the gastrointestinal tract (GIT) and the drug profile data, such as dose, absorption properties and the quantity of drug needed, one can determine the desired release rate of the drug from controlled release dosage form (Jain 2004 ; Vyas and Khar 2002; Danki et al, 2010)
Drugs that are easily absorbed from the G.I.T and having a short half-life are eliminated quickly from the blood circulation. To avoid this problem the oral controlled release formulations have been developed. These will release the drug slowly into the GIT and maintain a constant drug concentration in the serum for a longer period of time. One would always like to have ideal drug delivery systems that will be a single dose for the whole duration of treatment, and which delivers the active drug directly at the site of action. These include drugs that act locally in the stomach, are primarily absorbed in the stomach; are poorly soluble at an alkaline pH, have a narrow window of absorption,...