Abstract

A central composite design was employed to produce microcapsules of propranolol hydrochloride by o/o emulsion solvent evaporation technique using a mixture of cellulose acetate butyrate as coat material and span-80 as an emulsifier. The effect of formulation variables namely levels of cellulose acetate butyrate (X 1 ) and percentage of Span-80 (X 2 ) on encapsulation efficiency (Y 1 ), drug release at the end of 1.5 h (Y 2 ), 4 h (Y 3 ), 8 h (Y 4 ), 14 h (Y 5 ), and 24 h (Y 6 ) were evaluated using the F test. Mathematical models containing only the significant terms were generated for each response parameter using multiple linear regression analysis and analysis of variance. Both the formulation variables exerted a significant influence (P <0.05) on Y 1 whereas the cellulose acetate butyrate level emerged as the lone factor which significantly influenced the other response parameters. Numerical optimization using desirability approach was employed to develop an optimized formulation by setting constraints on the dependent and independent variables. The experimental values of Y 1 , Y 2 , Y 3 , Y 4 , Y 5 , and Y 6 for the optimized formulation was found to be 92.86±1.56% w/w, 29.58±1.22%, 48.56±2.56%, 60.85±2.35%, 76.23±3.16% and 95.12±2.41%, respectively which were in close agreement with those predicted by the mathematical models. The drug release from microcapsules followed first order kinetics and was characterized by Higuchi diffusion model. The optimized microcapsule formulation developed was found to comply with the USP drug release test-1 for extended release propranolol hydrochloride capsules.