Matsuo Taisuke, Sato Chinatsu, Tomita Takashi, Sadzuka Yasuyuki
Division of Advanced Pharmaceutics, Department of Clinical Pharmaceutical Sciences, School of Pharmacy, Iwate Medical University; 1-1-1 Idaidori, Yahaba-cho, Shiwa-gun, Iwate 028-3694, Japan.
Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Teikyo Heisei University; 4-21-2, Nakano, Nakano-ku, Tokyo 164-8530, Japan.
Heliyon. 2020 Dec 22;6(12):e05800. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e05800. eCollection 2020 Dec.
Food thickeners are widely used to aid the oral administration of medications to patients with dysphagia. Powder-type food thickeners are used to modulate the viscosity of therapeutic solutions depending on the swallowing capacity of patients. Food thickeners inhibit or delay the disintegration of some medications, resulting in reduced pharmaceutical effects of the medications and/or their excretion in the stool. A short immersion time (within 1 min) is important to overcome these problems. Although thickened drinks are commercially available, their use as vehicles for medications is not well understood. In this study, we evaluated the effects of thickened drinks on the disintegration time of therapeutic tablets. Furthermore, we compared the thickened drinks with powder-type xanthan gum-based food thickeners. Forty tablets were used, including naked tablets, film-coated tablets, orally disintegrating tablets, enteric-coated tablets, and sugar-coated tablets. For the disintegration test, the tablets were immersed in thickened drinks or food thickeners for 1 min. The changes in the disintegration time of the 40 tablets immersed in the thickened drinks were comparable with those in food thickeners. The disintegration time of several tablets was shorter or unchanged after immersion in the thickened drinks. The disintegration time of rapidly disintegrating tablets tended to increase when immersed in thickened drinks, but it was less than 2 min for the majority of the tablets. These results demonstrate that thickened drinks, similar to food thickeners, could help administer medications to patients. Overall, our study provides valuable information for pharmacists and clinicians to decide the most suitable way to deliver medications to patients with dysphagia.
食物增稠剂被广泛用于帮助吞咽困难的患者口服药物。粉末型食物增稠剂用于根据患者的吞咽能力调节治疗溶液的粘度。食物增稠剂会抑制或延迟某些药物的崩解，导致药物的药效降低和/或其随粪便排出。短浸泡时间（1分钟内）对于克服这些问题很重要。尽管有市售的增稠饮料，但其作为药物载体的用途尚未得到充分了解。在本研究中，我们评估了增稠饮料对治疗片剂崩解时间的影响。此外，我们将增稠饮料与粉末型黄原胶基食物增稠剂进行了比较。使用了40片片剂，包括裸片、薄膜包衣片、口腔崩解片、肠溶包衣片和糖衣片。对于崩解试验，将片剂浸入增稠饮料或食物增稠剂中1分钟。浸入增稠饮料中的40片片剂的崩解时间变化与浸入食物增稠剂中的情况相当。几片片剂浸入增稠饮料后的崩解时间缩短或未改变。快速崩解片剂浸入增稠饮料后崩解时间往往会增加，但大多数片剂的崩解时间不到2分钟。这些结果表明，增稠饮料与食物增稠剂类似，可以帮助给患者给药。总体而言，我们的研究为药剂师和临床医生决定向吞咽困难患者给药的最合适方式提供了有价值的信息。
