Tropical Journal of Pharmaceutical Research

Review Article | OPEN ACCESS

Progress in Controlled Gastroretentive Delivery Systems.

R Garg , G D Gupta

Department of Pharmaceutics & Pharmaceutical Technology, ASBASJSM College of Pharmacy, Bela, Ropar, India.;

For correspondence:- R Garg Email: indianpharmacist@sify.com Tel:0091-98888-67172

Published: 20 September 2008

Citation: Garg R, Gupta GD. Progress in Controlled Gastroretentive Delivery Systems.. Trop J Pharm Res 2008; 7(3):1055-1066 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v7i3.8

© 2008 The authors.
This is an Open Access article that uses a funding model which does not charge readers or their institutions for access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read), which permit unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited..

Abstract

Controlled release (CR) dosage forms have been extensively used to improve therapy with several important drugs. However, the development processes are faced with several physiological difficulties such as the inability to restrain and localize the system within the desired region of the gastrointestinal tract and the highly variable nature of the gastric emptying process. This variability may lead to unpredictable bioavailability and times to achieve peak plasma levels. On the other hand, incorporation of the drug in a controlled release gastroretentive dosage forms (CR-GRDF) which can remain in the gastric region for several hours would significantly prolong the gastric residence time of drugs and improve bioavailability, reduce drug waste, and enhance the solubility of drugs that are less soluble in high pH environment. Gastroretention would also facilitate local drug delivery to the stomach and proximal small intestine. Thus, gastroretention could help to provide greater availability of new products and consequently improved therapeutic activity and substantial benefits to patients. Controlled gastric retention of solid dosage form may be achieved by the mechanisms of floatation, mucoadhesion, sedimentation, expansion or by a modified shaped system. The purpose of this paper is to review the recent literature and current technology used in the development of gastroretentive dosage forms.

Keywords: Gastroretention, Oral controlled release, Swelling, Narrow absorption window, Floating dosage form.