Novel insights in the distribution of water in the gastrointestinal tract published in Molecular Pharmaceutics

Research by scientists in the Nottingham Digestive Diseases Centre, the Sir Peter Mansfield Magnetic Resonance Centre and the School of Pharmacy at the University of Nottingham, and the College of Pharmacy at the University of Michigan investigating the distribution of water in the upper gastrointestinal tract has been published online in the leading peer-reviewed journal Molecular Pharmaceutics.

The rate and extent of drug dissolution and absorption from solid oral drug dosage forms is highly dependent on the volumes and distribution of water in the stomach and in the small intestine.

However, little is known about the time courses and distribution of water volumes in vivo in an undisturbed gut. Previous imaging studies offered a snapshot of water distribution in fasted humans and showed that water in the small intestine is distributed in small pockets.

In our study we quantified time courses of the volume and number of water pockets in the upper gut of fasted healthy volunteers following ingestion of the standard 240 mL drink of water used in the bioavailability/bioequivalence (BA/BE) studies, using recently validated non invasive magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) methods.

These novel insights add to our current understanding of the physiology of the gut and will help improve the physiological relevance of the dissolution tests of solid oral drug dosage forms.