An approach to formulating an oral floating drug delivery system for dexchlorpheniramine maleate using factorial design.

The purpose of this research was to formulate and evaluate a floating tablet formulation of dexchlorpheniramine maleate (DCPM) using full factorial design. A 32 factorial design (nine runs) was utilized to optimize the formulation, the contents of hydroxypropyl methyl cellulose (HPMC) (X1) and Carbopol 934P (X2) being taken as independent variables and t50% (Y1), % drug release after 6 h (Y2), % drug release after 12 h (Y3), and floating lag time (FLT) (Y4) as the dependent variables. The tablets showed 99.2635 to 102.4709 of the labeled amount of dexchlorpheniramine maleate indicating uniformity of content. The tablets containing DCPM released 72.28 to 99.461% of drug at the end of 12 h by an in vitro release study. Hardness, friability, floating capacity, weight variation and content uniformity were also examined. In addition,the tablets were evaluated for in vitro release characteristics for 24 h. The optimal batch (F9) was selected by regression analysis and followed Higuchi kinetics. The drug release mechanism was found to be a complex mixture of diffusion, swelling and erosion. The floating tablets of DCPM developed may be used clinically for prolonged drug release for at least 16 hrs, thereby improving bioavailability and patient compliance.