Eudragit E accelerated the diketopiperazine formation of enalapril maleate determined by thermal FTIR microspectroscopic technique.

PURPOSE: Enalapril may undergo the thermal-induced intramolecular interaction to cause an enalapril diketopiperazine (DKP) formation. It is interesting to study the influence of Eudragit E, as a coating polymer, on the stability of enalapril maleate. The reaction kinetics of the solid-state degradation process of pure enalapril maleate and Eudragit E/enalapril maleate mixture with different weight ratios were examined. The mechanism of solid-state interaction between Eudragit E and enalapril maleate was also discussed.
METHODS: The cast samples of pure enalapril maleate or Eudragit E/enalapril maleate mixture after evaporating the solvent were prepared on an aluminum foil and also determined by reflectance Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) microspectroscopy equipped with thermal analyzer.
RESULTS: The result indicates that the interaction might occur between enalapril maleate and Eudragit E in the solid state after evaporating the solvent. The thermal-dependent FTIR spectra show that not only the formation of DKP but also the six-membered cyclic anhydride occurred in the enalapril maleate/Eudragit E mixture in the heating process. Two pathways for solid-sate interaction were proposed. The stability of enalapril maleate was dependent on the weight ratio of enalapril maleate and Eudragit E. The activation energy (n = 3) of DKP formation for pure enalapril maleate was about 141.2+/-0.7 kJ/mol, but it was reduced significantly to 86.7+/-0.8 kJ/mol after interaction with Eudragit E (weight ratio: 1:1), suggesting Eudragit E might exacerbate the degradation of enalapril maleate. However, the degradation accelerated by Eudragit E was reduced in high content of Eudragit E.
CONCLUSIONS: When the weight ratio of both components was 1:1, Eudragit E might interact with the carboxyl group of maleic acid to exacerbate the degradation of enalapril maleate. However, the excess amount of Eudragit E might somewhat reduce the degradation of enalapril, due to the interaction that occurred between Eudragit E and carboxyl group of enalapril.