Abstract

Dried and milled date palm fruit was evaluated for its binding properties in comparison with acacia and tragacanth. Characterization of the granules in addition to quality control tests that included uniformity of weight, hardness, friability, disintegration and dissolution were undertaken. The granules manufactured using the binders had good flow properties and compressibility. As the concentration of the binders increased, the binding ability improved producing tablets with good uniformity of weight and hardness. The tablets manufactured using dried date palm was found to be less friable than tablets manufactured using acacia and tragacanth. Although, the tablets did not disintegrate, the drug release from the tablets passed the USP and BP specification for dissolution of paracetamol. Therefore, dried date palm fruit may be explored as a pharmaceutical excipient.

Key words: Date palm, quality control tests, disintegration, dissolution, weight variation, paracetamol.