DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION OF FAST DISSOLVING TABLETS & COMPARATIVE IN-VITRO DISSOLUTION STUDY OF VARIOUS MARKETED BRANDS OF ATENOLOL TABLETS

Atenolol is a beta blocker commonly prescribed as a hypertension and for the treatment of angina. The current study was undertaken with the aim of analyzing quality of commercially available brands of atenolol tablets available in market. To assess the quality, locally available 100 mg atenolol tablet of four different manufacturers were selected and certain physico-chemical parameters like weight variation, hardness, friability, disintegration time and dissolution profile etc. were evaluated using in-vitro analytical methods. All the tablet brands met the requirements of IP as they showed acceptable weight variation and friability. Brands were slightly different in hardness, disintegration time and dissolution profile from each other. The hardness of all the brands was found to be in the range of2.250±1.18 to 4.21±0.11 kg-ft. In water medium the disintegration time of all brands were found to be 0.57±0.45 to 2.22±0.23 min. Five out of seven brands showed better dissolution profile as they released more than 90% drug in 30 min. The study revealed that most of the marketed atenolol tablets met the BP standards for physico-chemical properties which are the indicators of drug quality. It can be concluded that drug products should always comply standard quality parameters that are the prerequisites for getting satisfactory clinical effects. Key words: Atenolol, hypertension, disintegration, dissolution