Abstract

Plant products serve as an alternative to synthetic products because of local accessibility, eco-friendly nature and lower prices compared to imported synthetic products. Natural gums and mucilage have been widely explored as pharmaceutical excipients. The present study was undertaken to separate mucilage from the seeds of Ocimum americanum Linn . and explore its use as a tablet disintegrant. Methods for extraction of mucilage from the seeds were developed and the yield by the method C was found to be 14%. The mucilage was evaluated for various parameters as per Indian Pharmacopoeia. The loss on drying, ash value and microbial load were well within the official limits. The disintegrating efficiency of separated mucilage was compared with that of the starch in tablets prepared using lactose, propranolol hydrochloride and polyvinyl pyrrolidone as model diluent, drug and binder, respectively. The disintegration time for tablet formulations prepared using mucilage (10% w/w) was less (154 s) than that of the tablet formulations prepared using starch as a disintegrant (269 s). The mucilage not interfered with the release of a drug from tablet formulations. Formulated tablets were found stable at 45 C for 4 weeks without significant change in hardness, disintegration time and in vitro drug release.