Drug release from matrix tablets: physiological parameters and the effect of food

Introduction: As dissolution plays an important and vital role in the drug-delivery process of oral solid dosage forms, it is, therefore, essential to critically evaluate the parameters that can affect this process.

Areas covered: The consumption of food as well as the physiological environment and properties of the gastrointestinal tract, such as its volume and composition of fluid, the fluid hydrodynamics, properties of the intestinal membrane, drug dose and solubility, pKa, diffusion coefficient, permeability and particle size, all affect drug dissolution and absorption rate. There are several dissolution approaches that have been developed to address the conditions as experienced in the in vivo environment, as the traditional dissolution being a quality control method is not biorelevant and as such do not always produce meaningful data. This review also describes the development of a systematic way that differentiates between robust and non-robust formulations by varying the effects of agitation and ionic strength through the use of the automated United States Pharmacopeia type III Bio-Dis apparatus.

Expert opinion: With the improved understanding of the physiological parameters that can affect the oral bioperformance of dosage forms, strides have, therefore, been made in making dissolution testing methods more biologically based with the view of obtaining more in vitro–in vivo correlations.