Development of Nicotinic Acid Controlled Release Tablets with Natural Phenolic Anti-Oxidant Polymer by Encapsulation Technique

Nicotinic Acid (NA) is a cholesterol lowering agent used to treat dyslipidemia. Proanthocyanidins (PC) was selected as a drug and encapsulation material in which the later has a dual property of being a polymer as well as cholesterol lowering agent. The encapsulation of NA with different concentrations of (PC) was carried out by solvent evaporation technique. The encapsulated NA was converted to granules which were then compressed into tablets by wet granulation method. It was subjected to many pre-compression parameters evaluation such as flow properties, drug content and encapsulation efficiency. The tablets were evaluated for thickness, hardness, friability, in vitro release studies, release kinetics and stability studies. The evaluated parameters of the formulations showed compliance with pharmacopoeial standards. The encapsulation efficiency was 99.73% and 99.52% of drug content. The FT-IR spectrum did not show interaction between drug and polymer. The drug release in pH 1.2 was lesser than in pH 6.8 buffer. The encapsulated product released drug in controlled manner in alkaline medium. The drug release was 97.1% and release was extended up to 12 hrs. The optimized batch underwent stability studies as per ICH guidelines. It can be concluded that among all the formulations the F5 can be considered as optimized formulation. The optimized formulations showed non-fickian diffusion mechanism of release.