Modified-release dosage is a mechanism that (in contrast to immediate-release dosage) delivers a drug with a delay after its administration (delayed-release dosage) or for a prolonged period of time (extended-release ER, dosage) or to a specific target in the body (targeted-release dosage). Pharmaceutics: Drug Delivery and Targeting, p. 7-13
Sustained-release dosage forms are designed to release (liberate) a drug at a predetermined rate in order to maintain a constant drug concentration for a specific period of time with minimum . This can be achieved through a variety of formulations, including and drug-polymer conjugates (an example being ). Sustained release's definition is more akin to a "controlled release" rather than "sustained".
Extended-release dosage consists of either sustained-release (SR) or controlled-release (CR) dosage. SR maintains drug release over a sustained period but not at a constant rate. CR maintains drug release over a sustained period at a nearly constant rate.
Sometimes these and other terms are treated as synonyms, but the United States Food and Drug Administration has in fact defined most of these as different concepts. Sometimes the term "depot tablet" is used, by analogy to the term for an Depot injection, but this term is not medically or pharmaceutically standard for oral medication.
Modified-release dosage and its variants are mechanisms used in tablets (pills) and capsules to solvation a drug over time in order to be released more slowly and steadily into the bloodstream, while having the advantage of being taken at less frequent intervals than immediate-release (IR) formulations of the same drug. For example, orally administered extended-release morphine can enable certain chronic pain patients to take only tablets per day, rather than needing to redose every as is typical with standard-release morphine tablets.
Most commonly it refers to time-dependent release in oral dose formulations. Timed release has several distinct variants such as sustained release where prolonged release is intended, pulse release, delayed release (e.g. to target different regions of the GI tract) etc. A distinction of controlled release is that it not only prolongs action, but it attempts to maintain drug levels within the therapeutic window to avoid potentially hazardous peaks in drug concentration following ingestion or injection and to maximize therapeutic efficiency.
In addition to pills, the mechanism can also apply to capsules and injectable drug carriers (that often have an additional release function), forms of controlled release medicines include gels, implants and devices (e.g. the vaginal ring and contraceptive implant) and transdermal patches.
Examples for cosmetic, personal care, and food science applications often centre on odour or flavour release.
The release technology scientific and industrial community is represented by the Controlled Release Society (CRS). The CRS is the worldwide society for delivery science and technologies. CRS serves more than 1,600 members from more than 50 countries. Two-thirds of CRS membership is represented by industry and one-third represents academia and government. CRS is affiliated with the Journal of Controlled Release and Drug Delivery and Translational Research scientific journals.
A few other abbreviations are similar to these (in that they may serve as suffixes) but refer to dose rather than release rate. They include ES and XS (Extra Strength).
In some SR formulations, the drug dissolves into the matrix, and the matrix physically swells to form a gel, allowing the drug to exit through the gel's outer surface.
Micro-encapsulation is also regarded as a more complete technology to produce complex dissolution profiles. Through coating an active pharmaceutical ingredient around an inert core and layering it with insoluble substances to form a microsphere, one can obtain more consistent and replicable dissolution rates in a convenient format that can be mixed and matched with other instant release pharmaceutical ingredients into any two piece gelatin capsule.
There are certain considerations for the formation of sustained-release formulation:
The biological half-life of the drug refers to the drug's elimination from the bloodstream which can be caused by metabolism, urine, and other forms of excretion. If the active compound has a long half-life (over 6 hours), it is sustained on its own. If the active compound has a short half-life, it would require a large amount to maintain a prolonged effective dose. In this case, a broad therapeutic window is necessary to avoid toxicity; otherwise, the risk is unwarranted and another mode of administration would be recommended.Lilesh Khalane, Atulal Kunte, and Arunadevi Blrajdar. Sustained Release Drug Delivery System: A Concise Review. Pharmatutor: pharmacy infopedia. 2016. Accessed: May 30, 2016. Appropriate half-lives used to apply sustained methods are typically 3–4 hours and a drug dose greater than 0.5 grams is too high.Sampath Kumar, Debjit Bhowmik, Shweta Srivastava, Shravan Paswan, and A. Dutta. Sustained. Release Drug Delivery System Potential. The Pharma Innovation. 2012. Accessed: May 30, 2016.Kapil Patil, Prashant Patil, Javesh Patil, and Sunil Pawar. A Basic Approach on Sustained Release Drug Delivery System. American Journal of PharmTech Research. 2011. Accessed: May 30, 2016.
The therapeutic index also factors whether a drug can be used as a time release drug. A drug with a thin therapeutic range, or small therapeutic index, will be determined unfit for a sustained release mechanism in partial fear of dose dumping which can prove fatal at the conditions mentioned.Ratnaparkhi P. and Gupta P. Sustained Release Oral Drug Delivery System – An Overview. International Journal of Pharma Research & Review. 2013. Accessed: May 30, 2016. For a drug that is made to be released over time, the objective is to stay within the therapeutic range as long as needed.
There are many different methods used to obtain a sustained release.
Osmotic release systems have a number of major advantages over other controlled-release mechanisms. They are significantly less affected by factors such as pH, food intake, GI motility, and differing intestinal environments. Using an osmotic pump to deliver drugs has additional inherent advantages regarding control over drug delivery rates. This allows for much more precise drug delivery over an extended period of time, which results in much more predictable pharmacokinetics. However, osmotic release systems are relatively complicated, somewhat difficult to manufacture, and may cause irritation or even blockage of the GI tract due to prolonged release of irritating drugs from the non-deformable tablet.
Spherical hydrogels, in micro-size (50-600 μm diameter) with 3-dimensional cross-linked polymer, can be used as drug carrier to control the release of the drug. These hydrogels are called microgels. They may possess a negative charge as example DC-beads. By ion-exchange mechanism, a large amount of oppositely charged amphiphilic drugs can be loaded inside these microgels. Then, the release of these drugs can be controlled by a specific triggering factor like pH, ionic strength or temperature.
Among the health information technology (HIT) that pharmacists use are medication safety tools to help manage this problem. For example, the ISMP "do not crush" list can be entered into the system so that warning stickers can be printed at the point of dispensing, to be stuck on the pill bottle.
Pharmaceutical companies that do not supply a range of half-dose and quarter-dose versions of time-release tablets can make it difficult for patients to be slowly tapered off their drugs.
List of abbreviations
Ambiguous, can sometimes mean Short-Acting
Methods
Diffusion systems
Dissolution systems
Osmotic systems
Ion-exchange resin
Floating systems
Bio-adhesive systems
Matrix systems
Stimuli inducing release
Pill splitting
History
See also
Footnotes
External links
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