Formulation Evaluation of Acyclovir Orally Disintegrating Tablets: A Brief Overview

The present study highlights about formulation development and evaluation of acyclovir orally disintegrating tablets. A vast variety of pharmaceutical research is directed at developing new dosage forms for oral administration. Most of these efforts have focused on either formulating novel drug delivery systems or increasing the patient compliance. Because oral disintegrating systems have the highest patient compliance, particularly in pediatric and geriatric populations, they offer an advantage over oral drug delivery systems. Furthermore, because they are unable to swallow significant amounts of water, patients with dysphagia, motion sickness, recurrent emesis, and mental illnesses prefer these drugs. Further, drugs exhibiting satisfactory absorption from the oral mucosa or intended for immediate pharmacological action can be advantageously formulated in these dosage forms. However, the requirements of formulating these dosage forms with mechanical strength sufficient to withstand the rigors of handling and capable of disintegrating within a few seconds on contact with saliva are inextricable. Therefore, research in developing orally disintegrating systems has been aimed at investigating different excipients as well as techniques to meet these challenges. Acyclovir is an antiviral drug used for the treatment of herpes simplex virus (HSV), mainly HSV-1 and HSV-2 and varicella zoster virus. It is a BCS class III drug. Hence an orally disintegrating tablet formulation of acyclovir was prepared by direct compression and wet granulation after incorporating super disintegrants croscarmellose sodium and sodium starch glycolate. Seven formulations were prepared. Tablet containing sodium starch glycolate showed excellent in vitro dispersion time and drug release as compared to other formulation. After study of seven formulations DT3 showed short dispersion time with maximum drug release in 10 min. It is concluded that fast disintegrating acyclovir tablets could be prepared by direct compression using super disintegrants. It can be concluded that formulation of dispersible tablet using sodium starch glycolate as a super disintegrants showed improved solubility and hence better disintegration.