¹Department of Pharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Technology, Faculty of Pharmacy, Tishreen University, Lattakia, Syria
²Department of Pharmaceutical and Pharmaceutical Technology, Faculty of Pharmacy, Aleppo University, Aleppo, Syria DOI : 10.29228/jrp.479 The bitter taste of acetaminophen greatly reduced its formulation in oral dosage forms, so masking the taste was tested using the solid dispersion technique by Eudragit E100 and the solvent evaporation method. The obtained solid dispersions were characterized by FT-IR and DSC. Then, production yield, and drug loading have been determined, and the efficiency of this technique in taste masking by in vitro-in vivo evaluation were investigated by measuring the amount of drug released at pH=6.8 similar to saliva and pH=1.2 similar to stomach. FT-IR demonstrated that absence of interactions between drug and polymer and DSC results showed the complete formation of solid dispersion for F2 and partial formation with F1 and F3. Production yield was more than 96% for all formulations, and drug loading ranged between 99-103% and this increased with special dishes, while in vitro drug release results at pH=1.2 after 15min reached 84.95±0.55,100.89±0.70, and 95.78±0.71 (μg/ml) for F1, F2, and F3 respectively. In another hand, taste-masking evaluation at pH=6.8 showed drug release amount after 2min less than the determination bitterness threshold (900μg/ml) there were 114.98,75.97, and 10.26 μg/ml for F1, F2, and F3 respectively. Therefore, this technique is considered efficient in masking the taste with obtaining a good production yield. Keywords : Acetaminophen; taste-masking; solid dispersion; Eudragit E100; solvent evaporation; threshold bitterness