ONCE DAILY GASTRO RETENTIVE MUCOADHESIVE CEPHALEXIN MONOHYDRATE TABLET: FORMULATION AND IN-VITRO EVALUATION

Oral drug administration has been the predominant route for drug delivery due to the ease of administration, patient convenience and flexibility in formulations. Mucoadhesive tablets of Cephalexin monohydrate were prepared with an objective to increase the bioavailability by minimizing the first pass metabolism and also to reduce the frequency of administration. Carbopol 934p as a primary polymer and HPMC K15M, HPMC K4M, and HPMC K100M as secondary polymers in different proportions has been used to formulate the desired mucoadhesive formulation with other tablet excipients and lubricants to give good compressibility by dry granulation method. The tablets were characterized by weight variation, hardness, thickness, friability, swelling ability, dissolution profile, assay and mucoadhesive strength. The selected mucoadhesive formulation FC2 exhibited 99.51% of drug release in 24 hrs, the mucoadhesive strength was found to be 95.04 gm so it has enough strength to adhere on the mucosa for an extended period of time. Kinetic study has been studied for the selected formulation it follows zero order release and matches with Higuchi regression. Selected formulation FC2 showed no significant change in the physico chemical parameters after storage at 40^OC±2 ^OC and 75% RH±5% for one month.