Release profile of ibuprofen in β-cyclodextrin complexes from two different solid dosage forms

The objective of this work was to develop solid dosage forms using powders containing inclusion complexes (ibuprofen with β-cyclodextrin) which were used to produce tablets (direct compression without additional excipients) and pellets (extrusion/spheronization) from wet mass containing 40% (w/w) of microcrystalline cellulose. The pellets also demonstrated that during preparation of the wet mass, the inclusion process occurred in a same yield that when pre-complexation was used. The particles characteristics were evaluated after being obtained through different complexation methods. The results showed that the tensile strength and profile dissolution were as expected for both dosage forms. Tablets containing inclusion complexes showed higher solubility when compared with a reference formulation and with two commercial formulations. The ibuprofen released from the two pellets formulations didn’t show relevant differences between them. The drug released was analyzed considering different dissolution parameters. The advantages of these new methodologies can be summarized as: (a) tablets were produced at a lower cost for the total process; and (b) in the pellet´s preparation there was no need of the previous complexation method resulting in a decrease in time and energy required