Browsing by Subject "denatoniumbentsoaatti"

The pet medication industry is growing but there are still challenges especially in feline medication. Palatable flavours, efficient taste masking technologies and easily administrable dosage forms are needed to facilitate feline medication. Based on the literature review, there is only little information about cat's preference to individual flavours. The methods for palatability testing should be improved to achieve reliable results. Most common taste masking technologies are flavouring and tablet coating. In experimental section different flavours for taste masking were studied. Five main flavours were selected: phenylalanine, leucine and methionine as possibly good flavours and arginine and denatonium benzoate as bad flavours. In preformulation experiments tableting characteristics, thermal behaviour and crystal structure of flavours were analysed. The aim was also to study their possible incompatibilities with tablet excipients. The main compatilibility study method was X-ray powder diffraction (XRPD), but differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) was also used. Excipient povidone (PVP) was incompatible with nearly all of the main flavours. The use of lactose as an excipient was excluded because of the risk of the Maillard reaction. In tableting studies a tablet mass containing microcrystalline cellulose (MCC), calcium hydrogen phosphate dihydrate, mannitol, hydroxypropyl cellulose (HPC), crospovidone, talc and sodium stearyl fumarate was produced. Minitablets of diameter 3 mm without any flavours were compressed. Also minitablets with flavours phenylalanine and denatonium benzoate were compressed. Minitablets complied with the European Pharmacopoeia tests for uniformity of mass, disintegration and friability. However, characterization and handling of minitablets was found to be challenging due to very small size of the tablets. Minitablets are a promising technology for facilitating feline medication in the future.