Abstract

Starch is one of the most important pharmaceutical excipients used as a disintegrant, binder, diluent, absorbent,
glidant and sweetener. Other applications may include increasing viscosity, defoaming and acting as an emulsifying
agent. However, starch used for the above-mentioned functions is corn starch which is imported from abroad which
constitutes an economic burden to the government and pharmaceutical industries since a lot of money is used for
importation thus affecting the final cost of products formulated from corn starch. The relevance of this research
study is to evaluate the disintegration of Solanum tuberosum starch as a disintegrant in the formulation of
paracetamol tablets. Irish potatoes are locally grown and thus readily available at the cheapest cost and can be used
as an alternative for starch sources such that the cost of production of pharmaceutical products is reduced to meet
affordable costs. In this study, Irish potato starch from Solanum tuberosum species was extracted in the
pharmaceutics laboratory and then used as a disintegrant to formulate paracetamol tablets by using a wet
granulation process. From the results obtained Solanum tuberosum starch passed all the tests according to the BP,
2020 thus making it suitable for use in pharmaceutical processes, the paracetamol tablets formulated using Solanum
tuberosum starch had the desired disintegration time especially at concentrations of 10% and 15% thus such