Studies on borassus flabellifer fruit mucilage as versatile excipient for pharmaceutical formulations

Abstract

There are number of synthetic polymers are available in market for pharmaceutical formulations, but these synthetic polymers have certain disadvantages such as high cost, toxicity, environmental pollution during synthesis,non-renewable sources,side effects, and poor patient compliance.Because of these disadvantages natural polymers such as natural gums and mucilage are preferred to semi synthetic and synthetic excipients because of the following advantages low cost and natural origin, free from side effects, biocompatible and bio-acceptable, renewable source, environmental friendly processing, local availability etc. Because of this demand for these substances are increasing and new sources are being developed. newlineThe endopserm of Borassus flabellifer fruit contains a high proportion of mucilage. Literature survey revealed that comprehensive physicochemical characterization and exploration of Borassus flabellifer fruit mucilage (BFM) as versatile pharmaceutical excipients in pharmaceutical formulations had not been done. Hence, the present study was aimed to enhance the use of BFM as a natural plant based excipients to develop various pharmaceutical formulations and it will encourage cultivation and use of this mucilage in the pharmaceutical industry. newlineThe disintegrating property of the BFM had been studied in comparison with commercially available superdisintegrant viz croscarmellose sodium in the formulation of Metformin HCl FDT s. The results indicated that the BFM exhibited better disintegrating property at lower concentration viz; 1%w/w than the crosscarmellose sodium, and hence it can be used as a superdisintegrant in the tablet formulations.The extracted BFM powder was evaluated for its binding properties in paracetamol compressed tablet. Its binding efficiency was compared with starch paste, which was used as standard binder at 10% w/v concentration. It can be observed from the results that tablets prepared using BFM at 8%w/v are comparable with tablets prepared using 10% w/v starch paste as standard binder.