Prodrug strategies for antihypertensives.

There is a great emphasis on research to discover methods aimed at enhancing the efficacy of drugs and reducing their toxicity and unwanted side effects. Prodrugs are biologically inactive compounds that are converted to actual drug molecule, through biotransformation, that combine with the receptors to produce the biological action. Prodrugs can thus be considered as drugs containing specialized nontoxic protective groups utilized in a transient manner to alter or eliminate the undesirable properties of the parent drug molecule. Hypertension is one of the leading risk factors for cardiovascular disease and represents a major health and economic burden. Most of the drugs for cardiovascular diseases have low oral bioavailability, short duration of action, first pass metabolism and variable lipohilicities. Out of the need to overcome these limitations, various prodrugs have been designed for antihypertensive agents. This review extensively focuses on various strategies used for design and development of prodrugs for the various classes of antihypertensives, emphasizing on the details regarding the need for prodrug synthesis for each class, structure, type of modification and goal achieved. It also provides an insight into the major advances in the field of antihypertensive prodrug research.

UV and Three Derivative Spectrophotometric Methods for Determination of Ezetimibe in Tablet Formulation.

UV, first, second and third derivative spectrophotometric methods have been developed for the determination of ezetimibe in pharmaceutical formulation. The solutions of standard and sample were prepared in methanol. For the first method, UV spectrophotometry, the quantitative determination of the drug was carried at 233 nm and the linearity range was found to be 6-16 mug/ml. For the first, second and third derivative spectrophotometric methods the drug was determined at 259.5 nm, 269 nm and 248 nm with the linearity ranges 4-14 mug/ml, 4-14 mug/ml and 4-16 mug/ml. The calibration graphs constructed at their wavelength of determination were found to be linear for UV and derivative spectrophotometric methods. All the proposed methods have been extensively validated. The described methods can be readily utilized for the analysis of pharmaceutical formulation. There was no significant difference between the performance of the proposed methods regarding the mean values and standard deviations.