The role of SeDeM for characterizing the active substance and polyvinyilpyrrolidone eliminating metastable forms in an oral lyophilizate—A preformulation study

A preformulation study of an oral lyophilisate with cetirizine dihydrochloride (CTZ) as active ingredient, mannitol and PVP K30 as bulking agents is presented. CTZ shown a humidity content of 0.150% and a spontaneous hygroscopicity of 0.200% (both determined by SeDeM diagram), demonstrating an adequate stability behavior in solid form. A design of experiments (DoE) performed with both mannitol and PVP K30, followed by a simple factorial design (3(2)) has determined the optimum combination of excipients and CTZ, and showed that a higher proportion of PVP K30 was able to prevent metastable forms generated by mannitol.