Sustained Delivery of Pentazocine from Mucoadehsive Buccal Patches to Improve Anti- Addiction Therapy During COVID-19 Pandemic

Introduction: Both, COVID-19 and addiction have formed the dangerous duo which fueled each other’s propagation. During this period of disastrous pandemic, all the nations should address the various issues of the addicts with the utmost care. 2019-coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is causing insurmountable psychosocial impact on the whole mankind. This article deals with the sustained delivery of pentazocine from mucoadehsive buccal patches to improve anti-addiction therapy. It is a small piece contribution of polymer chemists for the addicts during COVID-19. Recently, it has been found that drugs used during addiction therapy turn out to be addictive in nature when used in higher concentration for longer time. These drugs start acting as abused substances that are the major point of concern in the present work. Hence, some controlled and sustained drug delivery systems were required for the delivery of these compounds. Polysaccharide can act as potential candidate for the developing the formulations for the same. Methods: Pentazocine is an opioid analgesic that has mixed opioid agonist and antagonist actions. The controlled release pentazocine loaded pectin-psyllium poly (acrylic acid) based formulations were prepared by copolymerization method. In vitro release profile of the drug was determined along with the evaluation of biomedical properties. Results: The calibration curves of pentazocine lactate were prepared at λmax 277 nm on UV-Visible Spectrophotometer. The loading of the drug was found 42%. The values of the diffusion exponent ‘n’ were found 0.60. Conclusions: The release of pentazocine (a model anti-addiction compound) from polymer matrix occurred slowly in controlled manner without any burst effect and followed Non-Fickian type diffusion mechanism. The polymer samples were haemocompatible, mucoadhesive and antioxidant and could be utilized as buccal patches to improve anti-addiction therapy. This will overcome the draw backs associated with the conventional formulations of the anti-addiction drugs. Overall, controlled and sustained delivery of anti-addiction drugs from drug loaded drug delivery systems could exert of various benefits especially in case of drugs like pentazocine to improve anti-addiction therapy during COVID-19 pandemic. Overall the present work is an attempt to design the drug delivery carrier for the sustained delivery of pentazocine from buccal patches to improve anti-addiction therapy during COVID-19 pandemic Copyright © 2020, Focus on Medical Sciences Journal. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) Submitted: 12.17.2020 Accepted: 01.09.2021