Formulation and evaluation of quince seeds mucilage - sodium alginate microspheres for sustained delivery of cefixime and its toxicological studies

Quince seed mucilage was used in a combination of sodium alginate to develop sustained-release microspheres of cefixime. Physical characterizations such as FTIR, TGA, DSC, and SEM were performed on the prepared microspheres. The swelling of microspheres was maximum at pH 7.4 and reduced at acidic pH. The average particle size ranged from 679 mu m +/- 0.21 to 810 mu m +/- 0.31, while the drug encapsulation efficiency range was found as 73.76 +/- 0.24-85.6 3 +/- 0.46. In vitro release profile of QSM-alginate-cefixime microspheres followed Korsmeyer-Peppas model (R-2 = 0.9732-0.9946); and release was non-Fickian as we found value of n > 1. This study reveals the benefits of QSM-alginate microspheres for the sustained release of cefixime without any toxicity and it also improved antibacterial properties. (c) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of King Saud University.This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).