Abstract

PHARMACEUTICAL EVALUATION OF SOME BRANDS OF COMMERCIALLY AVAILABLE METFORMIN HYDROCHLORIDE TABLETS IN BENIN CITY, EDO STATE, NIGERIA

*Obarisiagbon Aiwaguore Johnbull, Airemwen Collins Ovenseri, Odebala Hillary and Awonyemi Olatunde Isaac

ABSTRACT

Metformin hydrochloride is an anti-hyperglycaemic drug used in the management of type 2 diabetes mellitus. It is known however, that there are certain factors that contribute to the quality of pharmaceutical products. This quality determines the drug’s bioavailability, relevance, onset of action and therapeutic outcome in patient care delivery system. This present study is designed to access the quality of various brands of metformin hydrochloride 500 mg tablets that are commercially available and dispensed at various Pharmaceutical drug outlets in Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria. Nine (9) brands were purchased from different stores and accessed to ascertain if they comply with specific standards required according to the British Pharmacopoeia (BP) 2007. The parameters evaluated were organoleptic and physicochemical properties such as friability, weight variation, hardness, tensile strength, moisture permeation, disintegration time, dissolution profile and content uniformity tests. The results show that all the brands have acceptable organoleptic properties and complied with standards for dimension. They passed the friability test as none was greater than 1%. All except Met 1 (18 min) passed the disintegration time test of < 15 min for uncoated conventional tablets. The mean hardness of the different brands of tablet falls within 4.0 – 12.1 kg, which satisfy the BP requirement of > 4.0 kg. The mean content uniformity for the various brands fall within 95.26 to 100.42% which satisfy the BP, 2007 requirements that content uniformity for Metformin HCl tablets should be 95 – 100% of active ingredient. All the brands of Metformin HCl tablets under study comply with the standard of quality for Metformin HCl.

Keywords: Metformin, Evaluation, Quality, Dissolution.