Advantages And Disadvantages Of Sublingual Mucosa

Sublingual Mucosa Drug Delivery The sublingual route uses passive diffusion into the lipoidal membrane. It is more permeable than buccal, gingival, and palatal membrane because the sublingual membrane is thinner than other membranes. Also, it has more blood supply and less keratinized membrane. The absorption of the sublingual route is affected by many other factors: lipophilicity, solubility in saliva, pH, binding to the oral mucosa, and oil-to-water partition coefficient of drugs. Drugs that have higher lipophilicity and a good solubility in saliva have good absorption in sublingual route. Drugs remain unionized at pH of 6.0 and have poor binding to oral mucosa increase absorption too. Also, drugs with oil-water partition coefficient range …show more content…
The Sublingual route does not require chewing or water to absorb drugs, so it is convenience and good for patients who have dysphagia or cannot have IV access. It has a rapid onset and short duration, so drugs are removed from the system quickly. Also, drugs are bypassed the first pass metabolism, so the low dose can have high efficacy. However, the sublingual route interferes eating, drinking and talking when patients are absorbing drugs. It is not suitable for sustained delivery systems, so patients cannot achieve long duration with the sublingual route. Even though drugs are absorbing passively, the sublingual route may be hard to deliver full efficacy of drugs for unconscious or uncooperative patients. Also, smoking patients may have low absorption by the sublingual route because smoking increases vasoconstriction of blood vessels and decreases the drug absorption. Many classes of drugs are used the sublingual route. One of them is pain medications/opioids. Since sublingual formation has a rapid onset, sublingual pain medications/opioids are useful for breakthrough pain control. Many studies were performed in order to find bioavailability of sublingual opioids. Studies had some limitations. Many studies had different sublingual retention times and small sample sizes. Also, hey could not specify whether the drug absorbed by a mucosal membrane or …show more content…
Buprenorphine sublingual tablets are made with or without naloxone. Buprenorphine has a poor gastrointestinal (GI) bioavailability, therefore, it does not have oral formulation. Comparing with other formulation, sublingual tablet buprenorphine has less bioavailability. The Sublingual tablet has 29% bioavailability relative to intravenous buprenorphine, and the sublingual solution has 49% bioavailability relative to intravenous buprenorphine. Since sublingual tablet buprenorphine has low bioavailability, it is indicated a treatment of opioid dependence by attaching to mu receptor. However, if patients want to use buprenorphine as an acute/chronic pain management, they can use. The daily sublingual dose of treatment is