Improvement of dissolution rate of arbidol hydrochloride from solid dispersion prepared with PEG system by fusion method

Solid dispersions (SDs) of arbidol hydrochloride (AH) with polyethylene glycol (PEG) of different grades as dispersion carriers were prepared by applying the fusion method. Powder X-ray diffraction, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), and Fourier transformation-IR spectroscopy (FT-IR) were utilized to evaluate the physicochemical properties of the SDs. The dissolution property of AH in the SDs was markedly enhanced in pH 1.2 buffer solution. After 3 min of dissolution, the percent concentrations of AH in the SDs with PEG 8000 and PEG 4000 were 59.03 and 53.56%, corresponding to a 15.44- and 14.01-fold increase as compared to pure AH. The water vapor adsorption test showed that the amount adsorbed on the surface of SDs had a marked increase as compared to the corresponding physical mixtures (PMs) and pure AH. Therefore, we propose that the fusion method, using PEG systems as the carriers, can be utilized to prepare SDs of AH, which will remarkably increase the wettability, solubility, and dissolution rate of AH.