III. Segregation of Active Constituents from Tablet Formulations During Grinding: Effects on Coated Tablet Formulations

Grinding or milling coated tablets in preparation for their assay can cause the physical separation of an active ingredient from the coating and other tablet components. This phenomenon has been shown to partially account for the poor reproducibility between duplicate assays, and for discrepancies among assays for the same group of tablets but which were composited by different methods.

The effect of compositing methods on the assay results is shown with commercial enteric coated aspirin tablets from various manufacturers. Samples for assay were prepared by manual grinding with a glass mortar and pestle, mechanical grinding with an electric tablet grinder, direct dissolution of the tablets in a suitable solvent, and uncoating of the tablets with an organic solvent prior to their manual grinding.

Suggestions are offered to minimize the effects of segregation of an active tablet ingredient during grinding or milling on the assay results.