Characterization of physical mixtures and directly compressed tablets of sulfamerazine polymorphs: implications on in...

The present study evaluates the effects of excipients, compression pressure, and relative humidity (RH) on the stability of sulfamerazine polymorphs (referred here as SMZ I and SMZ II) and their release from directly compressed tablets using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD), and dissolution analysis. SMZ I and SMZ II tablets were compressed with magnesium stearate (MGST), and microcrystalline cellulose (MCC) at 5000, 7500, and 10,000 lbs. pressures and stored at 40, 75, 95, and 100% RH conditions for 5 weeks. There were indications of possible drug-excipient interaction in the binary mixtures under different relative humidity conditions from the DSC data, but they could not be confirmed by PXRD because the crystal structures of the drug and excipients remained unaltered. The crystal structures of the polymorphs in the tablet also remained unaltered under the above conditions. There were, however, significant differences observed in the drug release properties of the two polymorphs. SMZ II was found in general to have a higher rate of drug release than SMZ I. Extensive gelation of MCC under higher moisture conditions, compression pressure during tableting, and inherent tabletability of the sulfamerazine crystals were factors that affected drug release. All these factors contributed towards prolonging the disintegration and deaggregation of the tablet particles and were therefore concluded to be the rate limiting steps for the dissolution process.