Evaluation of citrus fibers as a tablet excipient.

The consumption of fibers is associated with many health benefits, such as a reduction of cardiovascular and gastrointestinal diseases, control of body weight, and prevention of diabetes. Despite the widespread use of fiber supplements such as capsules or tablets, there is an almost complete lack of information concerning the technological properties of functional fibers used in nutraceutical formulations. The aim of this work was to characterize the technological properties of citrus fibers necessary for their use as a processing aid in tableting. The results obtained showed that citrus fibers share many properties of other polysaccharides used as tableting excipients, such as thermal behavior and compaction mechanism, together with an appreciable tabletability. However, the most interesting properties resulted from their disintegration power. Citrus fibers behaved in a similar manner to the well-known super disintegrant croscarmellose sodium and resulted to be little susceptible to their concentration, to lubricant type, and lubricant concentration. Thus, this work supports the idea of a potential use of citrus fibers as "active" substances and processing aid in the tableting of nutraceutical products and also as functional excipient in pharmaceutical tablets formulation.