Abstract

MULTILAYER TABLET: A NEW TREND IN SOLID DOSAGE FORMS

Nikhil T. Gavate*, Shital B. Gondkar, Ravindra B. Saudagar

ABSTRACT

Pharmaceutical products that are designed for oral delivery are currently available mostly in the immediate-release type. These are designed for immediate release of drug and rapid absorption. For added advantages of therapy and enhanced efficacy sustained and controlled release formulations are being used more and more. These forms also offer the advantage of patient compliance. Several advantages over the conventional are seen but still some problems arises in preparation of this kind of dosage form such as physical incompatibility, chemical incompatibility etc. Therefore the bilayer and multilayer tablets are known as a novel drug delivery system. Multilayered tablets possess various benefits, namely the ability to prevent incompatibility between drugs and Excipients; and by providing multiple release kinetics profiles in single delivery system of either the same or different drugs, by means of different release control mechanisms. The aim of this article is to review multilayered tablet dosage forms and outline its advantages. Various factors governing the design and evaluation of these types of tablets have also been discussed.

Keywords: Sustained drug delivery, Controlled drug delivery, multilayered tablets, Novel drug delivery system.