Development and Evaluation of Gastroretentive Floating Tablets of an Antihypertensive Drug Using Hydrogenated Cottonseed Oil

The aim of the present work was to develop a gastroretentive floating tablet of Atenolol and investigate the effects of both hydrophilic and hydrophobic retardant on in vitro release. Atenolol is an antihypertensive drug with an oral bioavailability of only 50% because of its poor absorption from lower gastrointestinal tract. The floating tablets of Atenolol were prepared to increase the gastric retention, to extend the drug release, and to improve the bioavailability of the drug. The floating tablets were formulated using hydrophilic polymers as Hydroxy propyl methyl cellulose (HPMC K4M and HPMC K15M), hydrophobic retardant as a hydrogenated cottonseed oil (HCSO), and sodium bicarbonate as a gas generating agent to reduce floating lag time. The formulated tablets were evaluated for the quality control tests such as weight variation, hardness, friability, swelling index, floating lag time, and total floating time. The in vitro release study of the tablets was performed in 0.1 N HCl as a dissolution media. The results of the present study clearly indicates the promising potential of Atenolol floating system as an alternative to the conventional dosage and other sustained release formulations. The study also revealed the effectiveness of HCSO as retardant in combination with HPMC.

Prospecting for Oil

From the 1770s to the 1880s agriculturists and cooks sought to develop culinary oils from plants. Thomas Jefferson's attempts to introduce the olive into the agriculture of the United States, as a partial substitute for lard in cookery and as a cheap oleo for the consumption of slaves, met with limited success, even in the southeast, because periodic freezes and high humidity thwarted the development of groves. Southern slaves from West Africa supplied their own oil, derived from benne (Sesamum indicum). Benne oil was merely one feature of an elaborate African-American cuisine employing sesame that included benne soup, benne and greens, benne and hominy, benne candy, and benne wafers. Only the last item has survived as a feature of regional and ethnic cookery. In the first decades of the nineteenth century, planter experimentalists began the commercial scale production of benne oil, establishing it as the primary salad oil and the second favored frying medium in the southern United States. It enjoyed acceptance and moderate commercial success until the refinement of cottonseed oil in the 1870s and 1880s. Cotton seed, a waste product of the south's most vital industry, was turned into a revenue stream as David Wesson and other scientists created a salad oil and frying medium designedly tasteless and odorless, and a cooking fat, hydrogenated cottonseed oil (Cottonlene or Crisco) that could cheaply substitute for lard in baking. With the recent recovery of regional foodways, both the olive and sesame are being revived for use in the neo-southern cookery of the twenty-first century.

A Practical and Nontarnishing Method for the Analysis of Trace Nickel in Hydrogenated Cottonseed Oil by Inductively Coupled Plasma/Mass Spectrometry with Pressurized PTFE Vessel Acid Digestion

A practical and nontarnishing method for the determination of trace nickel (Ni) in hydrogenated cottonseed oil by inductively coupled plasma/mass spectrometry (ICP/MS) was developed. In order to avoid tarnishing in the pretreatment of samples, the technology of pressurized PTFE vessel acid digestion was applied. The temperature and acid content in the digestion were optimized. The results showed that hydrogenated cottonseed oil could be digested completely by the proposed method. Compared with the U.S. Pharmacopeia 28 and British Pharmacopoeia 2003 methods, the developed method avoided the risk of using platinum and the tarnish from silica crucibles. In addition, the analytical cycle of the test solution was shortened by the use of ICP/MS instead of graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrophotometry.