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My 20 months old daughter is ill. She has a serious
bacterial infection, called cellulitis, on roughly 40% of her
face. She's in hospital for a few days, but she is improving
rapidly.
Every single drug they give her either tastes so bad you
wouldn't take it yourself, or she screams for a half
hour
while it goes in, intravenously.
There must be some way to make even antibiotics taste
halfway decent. Modern medicine has made huge
advances, but the geeks who formulate these drugs are
apparently lacking in imagination or compassion.
To the idea: If it takes 10 years to get a drug to market
then there is ample time to find a palatable flavour
masking agent to bring some comfort to those unfortunate
enough to need the medication, surely?
And, if they're formulated for kids then there can't be too
great an impediment to making them in shapes that kids
will eat. I tasted one of them, yesterday, to see what the
fuss was about. HOLY SHIT, it tasted bad!
[link]
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I liked this observation from [bristolz], at the
time. |
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//Okay, how about a two part medication, each
separately tastes horrid to discourage children
from administering it to themselves, but when
mixed, viola! it tastes like Kraft Macaroni and
Cheese or other child-friendly flavor. |
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Seriously, a kid's sense of taste is so acute
that I think it is really, really hard to mask the
flavor of the active medicinal ingredients. Even my
burned-out adult taste buds can detect really tiny
amounts of certain spices buried in a cauldron of
soup. Seems like a very hard problem to solve.
bristolz, Aug 31 2003// |
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Since then it has occurred to me the antibiotics, if
oral delivery is possible, could be delivered in
microcapsules, suspended in a flavoured syrup. |
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I honestly will get round to baking this one day, sort of. I'm about halfway there. |
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Little man's nightly dose of amoxicillin is bubble-gum flavored. |
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I remember as a youngun eating half a bottle of flintstones vitamins because they were yummy and came in fun shapes. |
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//delivered in microcapsules// That's a pretty good idea. Like tiny chocolate chips within half melted ice cream - down the hatch. |
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OD risks would be a concern. |
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Simple, useful great idea [+] |
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Like they say, a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. For the things that can't be masked by sugar, I would suggest putting them in soluble capsules. |
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I hope your child is better now!! |
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I used to take medication for what seemed to be ADH"D" as a child, before i began to see everything with inverted commas around it. I bit into that once and it was truly revolting and stayed with me all night. |
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Point of clarification? Your daughter was 20 months old in 2003? And you have simply reposted the old/deleted Idea? |
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Ordinary aspirin tastes bad; that's why they put a coating on it. For medicines in general the coating doesn't have to be sugary; gelatins also work (and there may be other substances that can be used, as well). It just has to be some coating that blocks the sense of taste for the time it takes to swallow the pill. |
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I thought this was Widely Known To Exist, even if they haven't always implemented it everywhere. Which means the solution to the problem posed, is to get that particular medicine coated. |
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So let's combine the microcapsules and [bristolz]'s 2-part concept. Have the capsules (that require stomach acid to disolve) lightly coated with a quick disolving bitter taste that can be easily neutralized. Is there a mild base that could be neutralized by the acid in orange juice that doesn't make enough of a fizzing display that kids would want to see it again and again? |
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//HOLY SHIT//
Reference to the Pope's poop? |
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what caught my attention here is: "Every single
drug they give her either tastes so bad you
wouldn't take it yourself, or she screams for a half
hour while it goes in, intravenously." |
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Intravenously! Weirdly, I know exactly this
phenomenon. As a kid I noticed that both
cyclophosphamide and methotrexate induced a
metallic and disinfectant-y tastes respectively.
The solution was, as it usually is, cheese. Many of
the kids on the ward, including me, would munch
through all kinds of cheesy snacks. For whatever
reason it overpowered the drugs. |
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I deleted my entire account in 2009, [Vernon]. Last
night I was discussing how some medicines look and
taste bad and he mentioned this idea and asked I
repost it, so I did. |
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Microcapsules schmicrocapsules. Pretty much any
medicine can be delivered in a gelatin capsule,
which has no taste and dissolves quickly. |
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Of course, using gelatin capsules mean the IV needle
would have to be a lot bigger. |
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Getting little kids to swallow capsules is harder than
getting cats to do so, [MB]. |
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That none of the "brilliant" medical boffins has ever
cared enough about people to actually create
medications that deliver in the way I've suggested is
testament to their pathological indifference to
others, I suspect. |
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Or it could be you are just way smarter than all of them. |
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^I'm voting for pathologicial indifference. |
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I'm hoping you won't overlook the suggestion [ bs0u0155] made about providing a simple and tactile supplement like sliced cheese to help make the medicine go down. I don't know how many times I've seen the aesthetes on this site turn up their nose at the very thought of American cheese, but for a simple, digestible, benign, and yet semi-nutritious and good-tasting mask for officious medications , a simple slice of Kraft American cheese would seem efficacious. If you wanted to spread a very thin layer of cream cheese to the slice and roll it like a cigar I am sure that it would be even more fun and delectable to ingest as the medicine goes down. |
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The question drug companies will ask is, "Is it going
to help sell more product or increase profits?" |
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If not, it's not a justifiable expense. |
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I actually think the central (and Cinderella) problem in non-preventive medicine is concordance. If anyone can point me in the direction of some links to deal with the issue, i would be most grateful. In the meantime, this looks like a big step in that direction to me. |
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