The Role of Polymers and Excipients for Better Gastric Retention of Captopril.

Captopril is an angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor that prevents angiotensin I (ATI) from being converted to angiotensin II (ATII). However, it offers certain limitations like instability, dose dumping and burst release due to its usage in the native state. In the last two decades, different polymers and excipients have been used to make captopril more accessible and well-accepted. The present work discusses the efforts made by various scientists so far to make the oral administration of captopril more acceptable by overcoming its limitations. The different factors affecting gastric retention, approaches to achieve better gastric retention. The oral managed release dosage forms have enormous curative benefits such as improved therapeutics and better patient compliance. The polymer based gastro-retentive drug delivery systems (GRDDS) include microspheres, soild inclusion complex, floating tablets, alginate based beads, etc utilizes better retention in the stomach for longer duration of action and improved bioavailability. Overall, the work aims to summarize the attempts made as novel drug delivery approaches over the last two decades in reverse chronological order to make captopril more gastro retentive and orally acceptable by the patients.