Development of fast dissolving oral films containing lercanidipine HCl nanoparticles in semicrystalline polymeric matrix for enhanced dissolution and ex vivo permeation.

Lercanidipine is a vasoselective dihydropyridine calcium antagonist, mainly used for the treatment of hypertension and angina pectoris. However, it suffers from food dependent absorption, poor solubility, low permeability and considerable first pass metabolism, resulting in highly variable and low bioavailability of 10%. Nanoparticles of lercanidipine were incorporated in fast dissolving oral films (FDO) via preparation of nanosuspension by evaporative antisolvent precipitation method. Prepared nanosuspensions were incorporated in FDO without lyophilizing or spray drying. Two nanosuspensions containing PEG 400 and TPGS 1000 as stabilizers, were selected further for incorporation in FDO. Physicochemical and mechanical properties of the optimized films were observed to be within acceptance criteria. SEM images as well as FTIR chemical images of oral films show uniform distribution of nanoparticles in polymeric matrix. The DSC and XRD results proved the poorly crystalline nature of lercanidipine. However thermal processing of film induces crystallinity in hypromellose which results in embedding of amorphous drug nanoparticles in semicrystalline polymeric matrix. Superior dissolution and permeability properties of nanoparticles were confirmed by in vitro dissolution studies and about 4.5-folds higher ex vivo drug permeation was observed from formulation through porcine buccal mucosa. This may give the clue for enhancement of bioavailability in vivo via improving orotransmucosal absorption.

Synergy of gatifloxacin with cefoperazone and cefoperazone-sulbactam against resistant strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

Chequerboard and time-kill methods were used to compare the in vitro efficacies of the combinations gatifloxacin (GAT) with cefoperazone (CFP) and GAT with cefoperazone-sulbactam (CFP-SUL) against 58 clinical isolates of Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The combinations GAT+CFP and GAT+CFP-SUL were shown to be synergistic for 36.2 and 58.6 % of isolates tested, respectively, using the chequerboard method. Time-kill studies with 11 strains showed synergy in 54.5 % for the GAT+CFP combination and 72.7 % for the GAT+CFP-SUL combination. The agreement between these two methods was found to be 72-81 %. There was a significant difference in synergy between the two combinations tested (P=0.011).