Elsevier, Saudi Pharmaceutical Journal, 4(24), p. 458-472, 2016
DOI: 10.1016/j.jsps.2014.10.001
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Ulcerative colitis is the chronic relapsing multifactorial gastrointestinal inflammatory bowel disease, which is characterized by bloody or mucus diarrohea, tenesmus, bowel dystension, anaemia. The annual incidence for ulcerative colitis in Asia, North America and Europe was found to be 6.3, 19.2 and 24.3 per 100,000 person-years. The major challenge in the treatment of ulcerative colitis is appropriate local targeting and drug related side-effects. To overcome these challenges, microparticulate systems seems to be a promising approach for controlled and sustained drug release after oral administration. The main goal of this article is to explore the role of microparticles in ulcerative colitis for the appropriate targeting of drugs to colon. There are different approaches which has been studied over the last decade, including prodrugs, polymeric approach, time released system, pH sensitive system, which shows the site specific drug delivery to colon. Among these approaches, microparticulate drug delivery system has been gaining an immense importance for local targeting of drug to colon at a controlled and sustained rate. Combined approaches such as pH dependent and time dependent system provide the maximum release of drug into colon via oral route. This article embraces briefly about pathophysiology, challenges and polymeric approaches mainly multiparticulate systems for site specific drug delivery to colon in sustained and controlled manner so that drug related side-effects by reducing dosage frequency can be minimised.