Gastroretentive Drug Delivery Systems: A Promising Approach

Controlled release drug delivery system (CRDDS) have been most extensively used to improve therapy of certain drugs, but several physiological difficulties faced with CRDDS is the inability to restrain and remain in the gastric region for several hours which limit the bioavailability of drug. Hence drug delivery systems with prolonged gastric residence time (GRT) are an approach to improve bioavailability of drugs, reduction in dose thereby leading to less side/toxic effects. Many approaches have been utilized in the development of gastric retention drug delivery systems (GRDDS) such as floating system, extended system, high density system, superporus system, bioadhesive system, and magnetic system etc. This review also summarizes the in vitro and in vivo studies to evaluate the performance and application of GRDDS. These systems are useful to several problems encountered during the development of a pharmaceutical dosage form.