Design and In-Vivo Evaluation of Risperidone Buccal Mucoadhesive Patches of Interpolymer Matrix

The buccal cavity is an alternate route for the administration of the drug. This route gained acceptance as increase in bioavailability is observed due to bypass of first pass metabolism. Solvent casting method was employed for the preparation of the risperidone mucoadhesive patches using different combinations of water soluble and water insoluble polymers using polyvinyl alcohol as a backing layer. Our main objective of this study was to understand the behaviour of water soluble and water insoluble polymers in combination on release pattern. Six different formulations of mucoadhesive patches were evaluated for physicochemical parameters like weight uniformity, content uniformity, thickness uniformity, surface pH, swelling studies, tensile strength, folding endurance, in-vitro drug release, and in-vivo drug absorption. Drug loaded mucoadhesive patches of various polymer bases had shown 35.64 to 72.33% drug release in 30 min in phosphate buffer solution of pH 6.6. In-vitro release data from patches were fit to different equations and kinetic models to explain release profiles. Kinetic models like Hixon-Crowell and Higuchi models were used. The formulation containing HPMC (15Cps) and polyvinyl pyrrolidone was considered as optimized based on the physicochemical and pharmaceutical properties. In-vivo studies in rabbits, carried out with prior permission from IAEC, showed 80.40% of drug release from the optimized patches. In-vivo and in-vitro correlations were found to be good. The drug absorption was found significant from the optimized formulation in healthy rabbits. The structure of the buccal membrane and permeability factors are similar in both human beings and rabbits. Therefore mucoadhesive patches of risperidone may be accepted with the important advantage of reduced risperidone dose.