Modified-release dosage
[1] Sometimes these and other terms are treated as synonyms, but the United States Food and Drug Administration has in fact defined most of these as different concepts.
In addition to pills, the mechanism can also apply to capsules and injectable drug carriers (that often have an additional release function), forms of controlled release medicines include gels, implants and devices (e.g. the vaginal ring and contraceptive implant) and transdermal patches.
Examples for cosmetic, personal care, and food science applications often centre on odour or flavour release.
Through coating an active pharmaceutical ingredient around an inert core and layering it with insoluble substances to form a microsphere, one can obtain more consistent and replicable dissolution rates in a convenient format that can be mixed and matched with other instant release pharmaceutical ingredients into any two piece gelatin capsule.
If the active compound has a short half-life, it would require a large amount to maintain a prolonged effective dose.
In this case, a broad therapeutic window is necessary to avoid toxicity; otherwise, the risk is unwarranted and another mode of administration would be recommended.
[3] Appropriate half-lives used to apply sustained methods are typically 3–4 hours and a drug dose greater than 0.5 grams is too high.
[6] Osmotic controlled-release oral delivery systems (OROS) have the form of a rigid tablet with a semi-permeable outer membrane and one or more small laser drilled holes in it.
OROS is a trademarked name owned by ALZA Corporation, which pioneered the use of osmotic pumps for oral drug delivery.
They are significantly less affected by factors such as pH, food intake, GI motility, and differing intestinal environments.
The buoyancy will allow the system to float to the top of the stomach and release at a slower rate without worry of excreting it.
[3] Examples of stimuli that may be used to bring about release include pH, enzymes, light, magnetic fields, temperature, ultrasonics, osmosis, cellular traction forces,[21] and electronic control of MEMS[22] and NEMS.
By ion-exchange mechanism, a large amount of oppositely charged amphiphilic drugs can be loaded inside these microgels.
[25][26] Among the health information technology (HIT) that pharmacists use are medication safety tools to help manage this problem.
For example, the ISMP "do not crush" list[27] can be entered into the system so that warning stickers can be printed at the point of dispensing, to be stuck on the pill bottle.
Pharmaceutical companies that do not supply a range of half-dose and quarter-dose versions of time-release tablets can make it difficult for patients to be slowly tapered off their drugs.
