Disintegration test to measure lot-to-lot variations of vaginal tablets

Attempts were made to investigate the disintegration test for vaginal tablets. Disintegration tests were done for four different commercial vaginal tablets (three lots each) by the watch glass method and Japanese Pharmacopoeia (JP) disintegration method, and the resulting profiles were compared to those by the modified British Pharmacopoeia (BP) method on a point of lot-to-lot variation of the disintegration times. The disintegration time of every tablet by the modified BP method was longest, followed by the watch glass method, and finally by the JP disintegration method. The results for lot-to-lot differences in disintegration times by the modified BP method were similar to those by the watch glass method. However, such lot-to-lot differences as found by the modified BP method and watch glass method were not always observed by the JP disintegration method. It was concluded from these results that the modified BP method was most suitable for investigating lot-to-lot differences in the disintegration of vaginal tablets.