Pulsatile Drug Delivery System-A Review

TLDR: Pulsatile drug delivery systems (PDDS) are gaining importance as these systems deliver the drug at specific time as per the pathophysiological need of the disease resulting in improved patient therapeutic efficacy and compliance as discussed by the authors.

Abstract: Sustained and controlled drug delivery system release the drug at a substantially steady rate of release per unit of time. However, there are instances where maintaining a constant blood level of a drug is not desirable. In such cases a pulsatile drug delivery may be more advantageous. Pulsatile drug delivery systems (PDDS) are gaining importance as these systems deliver the drug at specific time as per the pathophysiological need of the disease resulting in improved patient therapeutic efficacy and compliance. Diseases wherein PDDS are promising include asthma, peptic ulcer cardiovascular diseases, arthritis attention deficit syndrome in children, and hypercholesterolemia. PDDS can be classified into time controlled systems wherein the drug release is controlled primarily by the delivery system; stimuli induced PDDS in which release is controlled by the stimuli, like the pH or enzymes present in the intestinal tract or enzymes present in the drug delivery system and externally regulated system where release is programmed by external stimuli like magnetism, ultrasound, electrical effect and irradiation. The current article focuses on the diseases requiring PDDS, methodologies involved for the existing systems, current situation and future scope, recent advances in PDDS and PDDS product currently available in the market.