A mathematical model to predict the release of water-soluble drugs from HPMC matrices

A mathematical model to predict the fraction of water-soluble drug released as a function of release time (t, h), HPMC concentration (CH, w/w), and volume of drug molecule (V, nm3) was derived with ranitidine hydrochloride, diltiazem hydrochloride, and ribavirin as model drugs. The model is log (M(t)/M(infinity)) = 0.5 log t-0.3322CH-0.2222V-0.2988 (n = 140, r = 0.9848), where M(t) is the amount of drug released at time t, M(infinity) is the amount of drug released over a very long time, which corresponds in principle to the initial loading, n is the number of samples, and r is the correlation coefficient. The model was validated using isoniazid and satisfactory results were obtained. The model can be used to predict the release fraction of various soluble drugs from HPMC matrices having different polymer levels.