Effects of thickened drinks on the disintegration of various oral tablets

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.