FORMULATION AND EVALUATION OF EMULGELS CONTAINING ETODOLAC

Vandana M. V.* and Dr. Suja C.

ABSTRACT

Emulgel is a novel drug delivery system with dual control release. Etodolac is a hydrophobic, BCS class-II, anti-inflammatory drug used in the treatment of rheumatoid-arthritis with half-life 4-6 hours. The present study is aimed at reducing gastro-intestinal related toxicities associated with oral administration of Etodolac, and also to improve drug release, permeation, selective absorption of drug at site of action and for enhancing stability. In this study, the effect of various gelling agents and penetration enhancers are also aimed to be studied. Two gelling agents used are carbopol and HPMC. Physical evaluation and rheological studies were done to determine the best gelling agent for preparation of emulgel and it was found that carbopol was a better gelling agent. Hence, further studies to find out the effect of penetration enhancer was done using carbopol as gelling agent. Two penetration enhancers used are propylene glycol and oleic acid. Optimization studies have been done by Design Expert software using Box-Behnken design. 17 formulations were prepared. All the formulations were evaluated for physical appearance, viscosity, pH, spreadability, extrudability, drug content and in vitro drug release. All the formulations showed results within acceptable range. The optimized formulation F4 showed drug release 95.4% and spreadability 30g.cm/sec. Kinetic studies, stability and skin-irritation studies were conducted on the optimized formulation. Mechanism of drug release was found to be zero-order and non-fickian super case-II transport. The stability and skin-irritation studies of optimized formulation confirmed that the formulation was stable and safe for use in animals.

Keywords: Emulgels, etodolac, anti-inflammatory, carbopol, HPMC, optimization.