Given the inherently bitter taste of most active pharmaceutical ingredients, a key challenge for developers is how best to use flavourings and taste-masking technologies to make oral dosage forms taste pleasant. This is particularly important for user-friendly oral dosage forms because they spend longer in the mouth and are tasted more thoroughly.
In this article, we consider the importance of taste in formulation development. We also look at how electronic tongue technology can overcome some of the practical and ethical challenges of taste testing, delivering more reliable results and reducing development time and costs. When it comes to developing orally administered medicines, tablets and capsules are often the “go-to” dosage form for the pharmaceutical industry. However, it is frequently underestimated how many people find swallowing them challenging.
In fact, a recent study conducted in the US and Germany found that more than half of those surveyed experienced difficulties swallowing tablets and capsules — with around a third describing the problem as serious.1 Many reported tablets and capsules becoming stuck in the throat. Others found that they had an unpleasant odour or taste — a phenomenon formulation experts often negate, as the common understanding is that tablets do not exhibit any taste properties.
And these swallowing difficulties aren’t just inconvenient, they can have a major impact on patient adherence to a treatment regimen. The same study found that 32% of those questioned broke the tablets into smaller pieces before swallowing, 17% crushed them and dissolved them in water, and 9% chewed them. All of these actions can negatively affect the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) release profile and, therefore, medical efficacy. Most worryingly of all, 8% resorted to not taking their medication at all.
Not yet a Subscriber?
This is a small extract of the full article which is available ONLY to premium content subscribers. Click below to get premium content on Manufacturing Chemist.
Subscribe now Already a subscriber? Sign in here.