[Application progress on taste evaluation methods for oral preparations]

Taste is an important factor affecting the medicinal properties of oral preparations and patient compliance with medication, and also an important evaluation index for oral preparation design and clinical application. How to characterize the taste objectively, accurately, simply, and efficiently is a bottleneck problem that restricts the taste design, development, and utilization of oral preparations. At present, the commonly used taste assessment methods for oral preparations are traditional human taste panel, electronic tongue, animal preference test, in vitro release study, and electrophysiological test. The traditional human taste panel is the first choice for taste evaluation, but it is limited by poor subjectivity and reproducibility. Therefore, despite some limitations, the other four taste assessment methods have been applied in the pharmaceutical industry as auxiliary methods. This study reviewed the detection principles, applicability, advantages, and disadvantages of the above methods to provide references for the taste correction research and taste assessment of oral preparations, improve patient compliance and the competitiveness of oral preparation products in the industry, and promote the development of oral preparation technologies.

The use of electronic tongue and sensory panel on taste evaluation of pediatric medicines: a systematic review

The palatability of medications is an essential factor for children's adherence to drug treatment. Several methods for drug taste assessment have been developed. The aim of this review is to explore the literature reports of the main methods for the evaluation of medicines taste, named electronic tongue (e-tongue, in vitro) and human sensory panel. A systematic search was performed up to March 2020 and a total of 88 articles were selected. The e-tongue (57.5%) has been more frequently described than the sensory panel (10.3%), while some articles (32.2%) used both techniques. 74.7% of the articles mentioned 'pediatric', 'paediatric' or 'children' in the text, but only 19.5% developed formulations targeting pediatric audience and sensory testing in children is rarely seen. The e-tongue has predominance of use in the taste evaluation of pediatric medicines probably since it is fast, easy to perform and risk free, besides presenting less imprecise data and no fatigue. The human panel is more realistic, despite its intrinsic variability. In this sense, it is proposed the use of e-tongue as a fast way to select the most promising sample(s) and, after that, the sensory panel should be applied in order to confirm the taste masking.