Recent Trends on Achieving Taste Masking of Bitter Drug

Taste is most important organoleptic aspects about the acceptance of oral drugs. Bitter and unpalatable taste is a major problem of certain drugs in formulations. In market, there are numbers of pharmaceutical preparations available in which actives are bitter in taste. The improved palatability in these products has prompted the development of numerous formulations, which improved performance and acceptability. The bitterness of preparation also leads to patient incompliance. 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 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.