In-vitro study of quality control parameters of three different brands of azithromycin tablets

Background: Azithromycin, being a very important antibiotic, is manufactured by different pharmaceutical companies and available in numerous brands. Therefore, it requires a quantitative evaluation and assessment of tablets chemical, physical and bioavailability properties.Methods: The physicochemical quality pararametrs like weight variation, size, hardness, friability, disintegration time and dissolution profile of three brands of azithromycin tablets were assessed by performing various test procedures according to established methods.Results: The different brands of tablets showed very slight variations in weight and size, not exceeding more than 5% of standard value. Similarly, hardness of all the brands was less than 5kg/f and friability ranged from 0.2 to 0.5%. All the brands tested disintegrated in <6 minutes and all the brands released >75% of the active ingredient within 45 minutes.Conclusions: All the physiochemical quality parameters of three brands of azithromycin tablets were found to be within the pharmacopeial specifications therefore all the brands were pharmaceutically and chemically equivalent and can be freely interchanged.