Swelling controlled delivery of antibiotic from a hydrophilic macromolecular matrix with hydrophobic moieties

A hydrophilic macromolecular network containing hydrophobic moieties has been prepared by free radical copolymerization of acrylamide and styrene in the presence of poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) and its potential as controlled drug delivery carrier was evaluated with tetracycline as a model, antibiotic drug. The amount of drug was assayed spectrophotometrically. The network was characterized by optical microscopy, infra-red spectroscopy and structural parameters such as average molecular weight between crosslinks (M-c), crosslink density (q) and number of elastically effective chains (V-e) were evaluated. It was found that with increasing concentration of PVA, ST and MBA in the hydrogel, the release rate initially increases but after definite concentrations of the above components the release rate falls. In the case of AM, release rate constantly decreases with increasing AM concentration in the hydrogel.