EFFECT OF NATURAL ALMOND GUM AS A BINDER IN THE FORMULATION OF DICLOFENAC SODIUM TABLETS

The present study was undertaken to find out the potential of gum from Almond gum to act as a binder and release retardant in tablet formulations. No significant work has been reported to use it as a tablet binder. The effect of almond gum and pvp on the release of diclofenac sodium was studied. The FT-IR spectroscopic studies of drug, gum and mixture indicated no chemical interaction. Seven formulations were prepared by wet granulation method containing Microcrystalline cellulose as diluents, diclofenac sodium as model drug using 2%,4%,6%,8% and 10% w/v of almond gum solution and 2%,4% w/v of pvp gum solution. This was carried out to find out the difference between synthetic and natural gum and whether synthetic gum can be replaced by natural gums. Physical and technological studies of granules and tablets like flow rate, carr’s index, Hausner’s ratio, angle of repose, friability and disintegration time were determined and found to be satisfactory. The drug release increased with almond gum when compared to synthetic gum concentration of 2% and 4%. The values of release exponent were found to be less than 0.5. This implies that the release mechanism is non-fickian diffusion. Tablet at 2% w/v binder concentration showed optimum results as tablet binder. The Almond gum was found to be useful for the preparation of uncoated tablet dosage form. Further this work can be extended to investigate on novel sustained release formulations.