ABSTRACT:
The oral delivery of drugs undergoing extensive first-pass metabolism is a tedious task, as the bioavailability of such agents is severely hampered, resulting in poor pharmacological response and compromised dose economics. Cardiovascular diseases are a leading cause of mortality and morbidity all over the globe, wherein nifedipine is such a prescribed drug with extensive first-pass metabolism and compromised bioavailability. In an attempt to alleviate the concerns of nifedipine employing simple materials and methods, orodispersible tablets (ODTs) of nifedipine were explored using various methods and materials. Out of various methods viz. lyophilization technique, wet granulation, dry granulation and cotton-candy process, the last method fetched with ODTs with acceptable disintegration time, wetting time and drug release profile over 10 minutes in Sorenson’s buffer simulating saliva. The novel material used Calcium Cross-Linked Cassia Fistula gum offered substantially improved ODT product over the conventional material, i.e., Croscarmellose Sodium (CCS). The optimized ODT not only improved the bioavailability of the drug by decreasing the drug extraction at the liver site, as evident from in-vivo pharmacokinetic studies, but also offered substantial reduction in the systolic blood pressure in L-NAME antihypertensive studies in Wistar rats. The in-vivo performance of the selected ODT was far more improved than that the available marketed product as well as the plain drug, advocating the superiority of the developed system over the marketed one. The pharmacokinetic, biodistribution and pharmacological evidences coupled with the results from the in-vitro parameters like wetting time, disintegration time and drug release profile provide a ray of hope for a commercially viable ODT product for nifedipine to manage the hypertension related problems.