Mennella Julie A, Pepino M Yanina, Beauchamp Gary K
Monell Chemical Senses Center, 3500 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-3308, USA.
Dev Psychobiol. 2003 Sep;43(2):120-7. doi: 10.1002/dev.10127.
The palatability of oral medications, many of which are quite bitter, plays an important role in achieving compliance in pediatric patients. We tested the hypothesis that the addition of a sodium salt to some, but not all, bitter tasting liquids enhances acceptance and reduces the perceived bitterness in 7- to 10-year-old children and their mothers. For both children and adults, sodium gluconate significantly suppressed the perceived bitterness and enhanced the acceptance of urea and caffeine whereas the reverse was true for another bitter stimulus, Tetralone. Because children preferred salted solutions more than did adults, these data suggest that the use of sodium salts may be an especially effective strategy for reducing the bitterness of some medicines and facilitating compliance among pediatric populations. However, based on sodium's differential ability to inhibit bitterness, as has been shown here with children and adults, clearly each drug of interest must be evaluated separately.
口服药物的适口性在儿科患者的依从性方面起着重要作用，其中许多药物味道很苦。我们检验了这样一个假设：在部分（而非全部）苦味液体中添加钠盐可提高7至10岁儿童及其母亲对药物的接受度，并降低其感知到的苦味。对于儿童和成人而言，葡萄糖酸钠均能显著抑制感知到的苦味，并提高对尿素和咖啡因的接受度，而对于另一种苦味刺激物四氢萘酮来说则正好相反。由于儿童比成人更喜欢加盐的溶液，这些数据表明，使用钠盐可能是减轻某些药物苦味并促进儿科患者依从性的一种特别有效的策略。然而，正如这里在儿童和成人身上所显示的，基于钠抑制苦味的不同能力，显然每种相关药物都必须单独评估。
