COMPARATIVE IN VITRO QUALITY EVALUATION OF SOME PARACETAMOL TABLETS, COMMERCIALLY AVAILABLE IN BANGLADESH DRUG MARKET

Paracetamol is a widely used non-prescription analgesic and antipyretic medicine. It is one of the most commonly used drugs worldwide with non-prescription sales exceeding 25 thousand million doses per year in the United States of America. The study was conducted to assess the comparative in-vitro quality control parameters through the evaluation of weight variation, hardness, friability, disintegration time and dissolution profile among the commercially available tablet brands of paracetamol. To assess the quality, Seven different marketed Paracetamol 500 mg tablet were selected and in-vitro dissolution test, potency, disintegration time was carried out. Other general quality parameters of these tablets like weight variation, hardness, friability were also determined according to established protocols. All the brands comply the requirements of ‘‘United State Pharmacopoeia'' as they showed acceptable weight variation range. Friability of all brands was less than 1%. No significant differences were founding disintegration time as they disintegrated within 5 minutes. In case of dissolution profile all brands showed better dissolution time as they released more than 60% of drug in 40 minute. The hardness of one brand was within the range 6 kg/cm2 to 10 kg/cm2 . The limitation of the potency must be within 95-105%. All three brands meet this specification. This study suggested that most commercially available Paracetamol tablet in Bangladesh maintain the quality and comply with the USP specifications. It can be concluded that standard quality control parameters always should be maintained not for paracetamol but also for all kinds of medicine for getting better drug products. Key words: Paracetamol, Comparative, Quality control parameters, Evaluation, Potency, Dissolution profile