Abstract

Purpose: To mask the bitter taste of the widely used antiprotozoal drug, tinidazole, and to formulate it into patient-compliant and convenient fast disintegrating tablets. Methods: Taste masking of tinidazole was achieved by microencapsulation using amino alkyl methacrylate copolymers (Eudragit E100) employing the solvent evaporation technique. Taste assessment was carried out by both a spectrophotometric taste evaluation technique and panel testing. Direct compression using sodium starch glycolate as a super-disintegrant and microcrystalline cellulose as a directly compressible filler was used to prepare fast disintegrating tablets. Tablets were evaluated with regard to a variety of pharmacopoeial tests, drug release, and disintegration time in the oral cavity and panel testing. Results: Both the spectrophotometric method and the panel testing confirmed tasteless nature of the optimized microspheres. In vitro dissolution studies at pH 6.8 showed that no significant amount of drug is released while tablet is in mouth and approximately 88% of the release takes place in 15 min at gastric pH of 1.2 indicating that taste-masking the drug with the pH-sensitive polymer does not affect the release of the drug in the stomach. Conclusions: Sensory evaluation for taste by a panel of 20 healthy volunteers confirms the successful formulation of the oral palatable fast disintegrating tablets which disintegrates in the oral cavity in 30 s.


Keywords:  Fast disintegrating tablets   Taste masking   Eudragit E100   Tinidazole