Honey has been used as an excipient to improve the taste of medicines for children.
An excipient is an inactive ingredient that is added to a pharmaceutical compound. There are various reasons for using excipients, ranging from the desire to mask off-flavours to the need to precisely control dosages. As a general rule, drug companies must be able to prove that an excipient is safe to use before they can sell a drug containing the product, and inactive ingredients may need to be listed on drug labels to comply with the law.
Many intravenously administered medications come in powder form and must be mixed with intravenous fluids to be administered.
People have used excipients in drug delivery for centuries. Historically, for example, medications were often mixed with honey or syrup to mask the taste for children. This use of excipient hides the taste and facilitates delivery. Other excipients such as diluents may be added to medicines, in the case of medicines with powerful active ingredients, to facilitate the administration of precise doses, making the medicine more voluminous.
An excipient is an inactive ingredient added to a pharmaceutical compound.
An inactive ingredient may facilitate the absorption of a drug by the body or decrease the rate of drug absorption, in the form of a sustained-release coating that allows the drug to dissolve slowly. Other excipients can make medications physically easier to swallow or make it easier for the medication to break down when it reaches the correct area of the body. Excipients can also act as binders, holding a drug’s ingredients together so they can be administered correctly.
Excipients can be used to mask unpleasant flavors in certain medications.
Some medications tend to separate or lose effectiveness if kept in storage, in which case the excipient may act as a preservative to maintain the potency of the medication. Other drugs lose their effect quickly when mixed with an excipient, in which case the active and inactive ingredients can be packaged separately and mixed as needed. This is common with medications used for intravenous administration, which usually come in powder form that must be mixed with intravenous fluids for administration.
Inhalers, aerosols and creams use excipients for their method of application. Inhalers, for example, contain propellants that aerosolize the drug and ensure it is delivered evenly, while topical creams are usually made with an inactive cream base to which active ingredients are added.
People with allergies should be careful with inactive ingredients in medications because allergens may be involved in the production of some inactive ingredients. Corn, wheat, dairy, and eggs are used to make medicine. In patients with allergies, it may be necessary to specifically order a brand known to be safe, rather than a generic version, to ensure that a medication does not cause an allergic reaction.