Formulation and In Vitro Evaluation of Fexofenadine HCl Fast Dissolving Tablets

A fast-dissolving drug delivery system is a tablet that dissolves or disintegrates in the oral cavity without the need of water or chewing. These are novel types of tablets that disintegrate/dissolve/ disperse in saliva within few seconds. According to European Pharmacopoeia, the Oral Dissolving Tablet should disperse/disintegrate in less than three minutes. The basic approach used in development of Fast Dissolving Table is the use of super disintegrant  like Crospovidone, which provide instantaneous disintegration of tablet after putting on tongue, thereby releasing the drug in saliva.  Crospovidone is a disintegrating agent at the 4-8% level and is an effective binder–disintegrant in tablets prepared using wet granulation. Furthermore, swelling properties paired with particle size distribution make the finer grades of Crospovidone work efficiently in fast-disintegrating formulation. Powders are evaluated for flow properties like Angle of Repose, Carr’s consolidation index and Hausner ratio were found to be within acceptance criteria to indicate good flow properties. Five tablets of each formulation with varying concentration of Crospovidone were evaluated for different parameters like Hardness, Thickness, Friability, Weight variation and Disintegration time were found to be within acceptance criteria. The F3 containing 7.2% w/w of Crospovidone was found to be promising and has shown an in vitro disintegration time of 20 sec when compared to control which shows 300 sec. By increasing super-disintegrant concentration for different formulations, our results reveal that the F3 has shown better release compared to control in 20 mins.