Purpose: Recently the liquid nanoemulsifying drug delivery systems (SNEDDS) have shown dramatic effects on improving oral bioavailability of poorly soluble drugs. The main purpose of this study was to prepare a solid form of self-nanoemulsifying drug delivery system of loratadin by extrusion-spheronization. The liquid SNEDDS are generally prepared in a soft or hard gelatin capsules which suffers from several disadvantages. Therefore incorporation of SNEDDS into solid dosage form is desirable to get together the advantages of SNEDDS and solid multiparticualte systems.
Methods: The SNEDDS was consisted of liquid paraffin, capriole, span 20, transcutol and loratadin as a poorly soluble drug. A multilevel factorial design was used to formulation of SNEDDS pellets, liquid SNEDDS (20 and 30%) was mixed with lactose, microcrystallin cellulose (40%) and silicon dioxide (0, 5 and 10%), and Na- crosscarmelose (0, 5 and 10%). The resulting wet mass transformed into pellets by extrusion-spheronization. The pellets were dried and characterized for size (sieve analysis), shape (image analysis), mechanical strength (friability test), droplet size (laser light scattering) and drug release rate (dissolution test). Selected SNEDDS pellets were also compared with conventional loratadin pellet or tablet formulation.
Results: The resulting SNE pellets exhibited uniform size and shape. Total friability of pellets did not affected by formulation variables. The in vitro release of SNE pellets was higher than the liquid SNE and powder tablets.
Conclusion: Our studies demonstrated that extrusion-spheronization is a viable technology to produce self-emulsifying pellets in large scale which can improve in vitro dissolution with better solubility.