FORMULATION AND EVALUATION OF MOUTH DISSOLVING TABLETS OF THE ETORICOXIB

The demand for mouth dissolving tablets has been growing during the last decade especially for elderly and children who have swallowing difficulties. etoricoxib is a new non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (nsaid) with selective cox-2 inhibitory activity, selective inhibition of cox-2 provides anti-inflammatory and analgesic activity it is commonly used for osteo-arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, primary dysmenorrhoea, post operative dental pain and acute gout. the main criteria for mouth dissolving tablets are to disintegrate or dissolve rapidly in oral cavity with saliva in 15sec to 60sec with need of water. the disintegrants used should fulfill the criteria by disintegrating the tablets in specified time limit.in the present investigation variety of super disintegrants like primogel, kollidone, ac-di-sol, l-hpmc, l-hpc, were selected and tablets were prepared by direct compression method in different concentration like 4% and 8%. the prepared tablets were evaluated for weight variation, hardness, friability, in vitro disintegration time, wetting time, in vitro dissolution study, etc. formulation f-9 shows the lowest disintegration time (44sec) and wetting time (52sec). in vitro dissolution studies revealed that formulation f-9 containning 8% l-hpc showed 97% drug release at the end of 20 min.