Development and Optimization of Formulation Containing Herbal Drugs for the Treatment of Malnutrition

Abstract

Nutritive rich diet helps in sustaining the normal physiology of body. The major problem in today’s world occurs due to inadequate diet leading to protein energy malnutrition and deficiency of vitamins, minerals leading to micro nutrient deficiency. According to current global scenario, occurrence of disorders due to malnutrition would be exponentially increasing and a targeted treatment in decreasing its scale needs to be considered. Moreover, nutritive diet helps in maintaining body energy, vitality, boost immune system that aids in developing resistance to certain illnesses like heart disease, cancers, diabetes, and gallbladder disease. Children are most susceptible to malnutrition as their immune system is under development stage. According to FAO globally in 2013; 20 million children death occurred from which 55% deaths were caused due to malnutrition. The current aim of study is to develop different dosage formulations incorporated with herbal drugs, which is consumer acceptable having noteworthy nutritive content and maintaining the efficacy as suggested by Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO). Nutrition, either under nutrition or over nutrition may cause diverse medical ailments. Since, malnutrition symptoms and characteristic are not pragmatic at early stage its management or remedy becomes challenging. Herbs have been observed as a miracle medication since ancient times having a potential source in treatment and cure of many disorders. Herbs are a source of many chemical constituents that plays a vital role in maintaining the normal physiology of body. Many herbal drugs have a potential nutritive content that is not widely explored scientifically. The herbs like rosemary, oats, silver weed, broccoli, date, spirulina, soy, moringa and many more have been proved to have significant nutritive content. In the present study, we have selected four herbs i.e. Moringa oleifera, spirulina, date fruit and isolated soy protein that individually have significant presence of nutritive content and have not been explored in conjugation. These herbs are selected on the basis of its nutritional profile, availability and health benefits. We have studied individual drug for its complete nutritional profile analysis and interpreted the individual calorific content. Different phytochemical and physiochemical evaluation were studied to get a general understanding of individual herbs. A compatibility report was studied to overcome the drug-drug interaction by FTIR that showed good compatibility and with no conformational changes. Moreover, DSC analysis was carried out to check the degradation pattern of individual drug in terms of its temperature dependency that may be a potential parameter causing hindrance in formulation development. An effervescent granule is selected as one of the formulation due to its simple applicability, visual characteristics and ease of preparation. We have selected different parameters in the development of effervescent granules i.e. effervescent ingredient, dispersive agent and concentration of sweetener. In which, the optimized batch showed significant effervescent time of 2.1 min with dispersion at 60 sec. Moreover, chewable tablet is selected as the formulation for ease of administration with easily consumer acceptability without use of water. The major parameters that were used for optimization of chewable formulation are glidant-to-diluent ratio and concentration of sweetener. Optimized final batch showed 6.6 kg/cm2 hardness with 9 min of disintegration time. In preparation of cookie only the time of baking and earlier analysed DSC analysis for its temperature based degradation was kept into consideration and optimized. The final formulations in effervescent granules, chewable tablet and cookie contained 12.85, 2.47 and 70.72 Kcal of energy; 0.43, 0.04 and 2.51 g of protein; 2.7, 0.56 and 8.33 g of carbohydrates; 10.06, 0.4 and 17.75 mg of calcium; 0.53, 0.015 and 1.36 mg of iron; 0.19, 0.012 and 1.36 mg of Vitamin C respectively. The cost of granules, chewable tablet and cookie are Rs.8 per sachet, 25 per 10 tablet and 23 per cookie respectively. Since, malnutrition has become a global scenario relating to wellbeing of women and children leading to growth of a better world. There is a need of a formulation that is consumer acceptable and emphasis on exploration of herbal drugs in nutritive profiling needs to be scientifically understood.