Effect of Crosslinking, Additives and Particle Coating on Ceftiofur Delivery from Chitosan Microparticles

CARLOS BUSATTO; JULIO A. LUNA; IGNACIO M. HELBLING; DIANA ESTENOZ; FEDERICO KARP

Buenos Aires

Simposio; XIII Simposio Argentino de Polímeros; 2019

Infectious diseases are a serious problem in animal breeding. Ceftiofur is widely used to treat numerous animal infections [1]. Actual therapies for production animals require the dairy dosage of the drug dispersed in an oily vehicle during several days and practical complications appear when large number of animals are handled. Therefore, microparticles prepared from biodegradable polymers appear as a promising delivery system for ceftiofur administration. They present several advantages, such as minimization of the number of required doses, reduction of adverse effects due to high concentrations, drug protection from degradation and/or inactivation, among others. Up to now, only batch processes (typically emulsion methods) have been used to prepare ceftiofur-loaded microparticles, resulting in relatively low encapsulation efficiencies [2]. In this work, the preparation and characterization of ceftiofur-loaded chitosan microparticles by spray drying was investigated. Microparticles were characterized in terms of particle size and morphology, water content, encapsulation efficiency and drug release behavior. The effect of drug load, crosslinking degree, incorporation of additives and particle coating on the in vitro release profiles was studied and compared with a commercial product.