Sublingual Tablet – An Alternate Route to Systemic Drug Delivery – A Review

Fast disintegrating sublingual tablets are those which delivers drug beneath the tongue then disintegrate rapidly within few minutes. In solid dosage form tablets are very widely used dosage form in oral drug delivery system due to its various advantages over other dosage form, but besides advantages there is few disadvantages like mental disability, motion sickness, sudden exposure of allergies. For such difficulties new drug delivery system like immediate dissolving tablets were developed. Drug absorbed through sublingual area and bypasses the hepatic first –pass metabolic processes giving acceptable and higher bioavailability. The one third of geriatric and paediatric populations has swallowing problems,resulting in poor patient compliance with tablet drug therapy which leads to minimized overall therapy effectiveness. It helps in improving efficacy of active API’s and provide more drug utilization. Sublingual immediate dissolving dosage form which offers the advantages of easiness in dosing and better dosing in the absence of water or other fluid. these type of drug delivery formulations are very suitable for allergic rhinitis, cold, CNS disorders where rapid drug onset of action is required for faster relief. Sublingual area of oral drug delivery is more permeable then buccal route and gives higher bioavailability. Different methods or techniques are used to formulate the sublingual dosage form. Various evaluation parmameters of sublingual tablets  are determined such as friability, weight variation, hardness, drug content, disintegration time and in vitro drug release.