preparation and evaluation of chitosan-alginate microparticles for luteolin entrapment

Luteolin (lut) is a natural polyphenol water-insoluble compound. lut-loaded microparticles (mps) were prepared by using the ionic gelation and polyelectrolyte complexation technique method. lut-mps were prepared using alginate (alg), chitosan (cht), tripolyphosphate, and lut. the prepared lut-mps were evaluated for encapsulation efficiency, percentage yield, morphology, in vitro drug release, ftirs, and antioxidant activity study. formulated lut-mps showed size ranging (2 to 4nm) and the sem image of lut-mps shows a smooth spherical surface for cht and cht/alg-mps is dimple with few spherical. ftirs confirmed that there was a slight interaction between pure luteolin and the excipients. the formulations also showed significant variability in the encapsulation efficiency (78.3±0.4, and 81.2±2.1) for cht and cht/alg respectively. formulated lut-mps has percentage yield of 77.7% and 74.4% for cht and cht/alg respectively. the in vitro results revealed enhanced drug release. the formulation lt-mps (cht, and cht/alg) showed the maximum drug release of 67.4±0.6, and 78.9±0.9% respectively, while pure lut showed only 20.1 ± 1.21% in 24hrs. the release data revealed significant variation (p < 0.005) in the release pattern. the enhanced drug release from lut-mps was achieved due to the enhanced solubility of lut in the presence of the polymers. the antioxidant activity results proved that lt-mps showed greater activity compared to pure lut at 0.5mg/ml concentration, the radical scavenging effect of chitosan, and chitosan/alginate lut-mps was 78.6±0.9% and 81.6±1.8% respectively compared to pure lut 76.3±0.7%. thus, it can be concluded that lut-mps formulation can enhanced bioavailability, solubility, stability and drug release of lut.