Chitosan Particulate System As Vitamin C Carrier

Abstract

Microencapsulation is a process of controlled drug delivery system that can improve the retention time of the nutrient in the food and allow controlled release at specific times, during food consumption or in the intestinal gut. It enables the controlled release of the ingredients by creating a barrier to avoid any chemical reaction. Microspheres are small sphere with uniform coating of polymer around it. They are very small in size but very effective in terms of number of dosage required. Microencapsulation technique offers potential advantages over conventional drug delivery systems and also, is established as an unique carrier systems for many pharmaceuticals as well as food ingredients. The aim of the present work was the formulation and evaluation of L-Ascorbic acid encapsulated microspheres by ionotropic gelation method using chitosan as biopolymer and tripolyphosphate as cross linking agent. Chitosan (CTS) biopolymers have immense structural possibilities for chemical and mechanical modifications for being used as coating material in microspheres. They are biodegradable polymers which degrade in vivo either enzymatically or non-enzymatically to biocompatible and non-toxic byproducts. In addition to biodegradability they offer low production costs, biocompatibility, nontoxic nature and mucoadhesive property. Vitamin C (L- Ascorbic acid), is an essential water soluble vitamin, has a variety of biological, pharmaceutical and dermatological functions. It acts as an effective antioxidant due to the presence of ene-diol moiety. It is very unstable to air, moisture, light, heat, and oxygen. Due to so many environmental, physical and chemical instability constrain it becomes challenging to develop such a drug delivery system for stabilized release of vitamin C. Vitamin C encapsulated chitosan microspheres prepared was characterized for their percentage yield, morphology, particle size, swelling index, encapsulation efficiency and in vitro drug release rate. Release studies were done in buffer pH 1.2 and then subsequently in buffer pH 6.8. The release rate of drug was affected by the composition of cross linking agent, biopolymer composition and pH of cross linking agent solution. Microspheres of batch B15 showed high drug release profile, high encapsulation efficiency, high percentage swelling index by optimizing various parameters and also their morphology was good as compared to other batches.