Novel Approaches in Development of Metronidazole Orodispersible Tablets

Oro-dental disease or disorders are most of the times associated with acute conditions of bleeding, infection and inflammation. Presently available conventional dosage forms lack in giving prompt relief and also requires high dose to produce desired therapeutic effect. Orodispersible tablets of metronidazole overcome the drawbacks of conventional tablets by giving rapid and site specific action at low dose (10–20 times less than conventional tablets) to produce desired effect.

In present work we have prepared orodispersible tablets of metronidazole by three different techniques of taste masking and three different disintegrating agents’ viz. Sodium starch glycolate (SSG), Bamboomanna (BM), Chitosan (CHN) and combination thereof.

All the formulations were evaluated for their pharmaceutical and clinical efficacy and among these formulations, the combination of SSG: BM and SSG: CHN in ratio 1:1 showed good results.

Metronidazole is a choice of drug in most of the oro-dental problems. The metallic taste and large dose size limits its use in dentistry. Pleasantly flavored and taste masked orodispersible metronidazole in tablet form helps to overcome these drawbacks and thereby increases patient compliance.