DESIGN AND EVALUATION OF MICROSPHERES LOADED WITH ESOMEPRAZOLE

The current investigation objective was to fabricate Esomeprazole loaded microspheres for the treatment of gastritis. The microspheres were prepared by ionotropic gelation technique using sodium as alginate polymer and calcium chloride as cross-linking agent. The effect of polymer and cross-linking agent on particle size, shape, % yield, entrapment efficiency, and drug release were studied. The prepared microspheres morphology and physicochemical properties of were investigated by Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Among the total 14 formulations, S12 formulation was optimized at 1.8% of sodium alginate, 10% of calcium chloride maintained 100rpm for 10min at room temperature. The optimized formulation (S12) In vitro drug release studies were conducted up to 12h in 0.1N HCl showing 95.3% drug release which followed the zero order and Higuchi model (R2 = 0.994, 0.944) respectively, indicating the possible drug release mechanism to be by diffusion. The optimized S12 formulation subjected to stability studies for 6months as per ICH guidelines. Concluded that before and after stability studies no appreciable difference was observed hence the S12 formulation found stable. The data obtained thus suggest that a microparticulate system can be successfully designed for sustained delivery of Esomeprazole and to improve its bioavailability. Keywords: Microspheres, Esomeprazole, release order kinetics, sodium alginate.