Evaluation of Ibuprofen/Montmorillonite Nano-Clay Composites as an Oral Drug Delivery System and Drug Release Performance.

A formulation for controlled delivery of ibuprofen (IBU) involving montmorillonite (MMT) nanoclays has been proposed. The present work has investigated the beneficial effect of MMT in improving controlled delivery of IBU. The intercalation of IBU into the interlayer of MMT was studied under different processing conditions such as reaction time and initial concentration of IBU. To characterize the IBU/MMT composites, X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier transform infrared spectra (FTIR) were performed. The release behavior of IBU from IBU/MMT composites have been investigated under vitro conditions using buffer media of simulated gastric fluid (pH 1.2) and simulated intestinal fluid (pH 7.4) at 37 °C. Controlled release of IBU from IBU/MMT composite has been observed during release experiments. Different mathematical models were used for fitting our experimental results, among them the best fitting was found for Higuchi equation based on the parabolic diffusion process.