Abstract

APPROACHES TAKEN FOR MASKING OF BITTER TASTE IN PHARMACEUTICAL PRODUCTS

Sunirmal Bhattacharjee*, Subhabrota Majumdar, Nilayan Guha, Gouranga Dutta

ABSTRACT

Taste is an important parameter in case of drugs administering orally. Taste masking becomes a prerequisite for bitter drugs to improve the patient compliance especially in the pediatric and geriatric population. The problem of bitter taste of drug in pediatric formulations is a challenge to the formulators in the present scenario. So masking of bitterness becomes essential and done by masking the bitter taste of drugs by either decreasing its oral solubility on ingestion or decreasing the amount of drug particles exposed to taste buds thereby reducing the perception of bitter taste. Methods commonly used for taste masking involves various physical and chemical method that prevent the interaction of taste bud with drugs and are based on coatings, solid dispersion system and ion exchange resin, entrapment method and masking of taste buds etc. Taste masking of bitter drugs become necessity in case of oral administration and selection of technology depends upon the bitterness of drugs and their compatibility with taste masking agents that does not affect the bioavailability of drug. The main objective of this review is to explore various methodologies for masking the taste of obnoxious drugs, applications, evaluation and also the recent trends in taste masking technologies.

Keywords: Taste masking, Bitter, Patient compliance, Drug product, Dosage form, Recent trends, evalution of taste masking.