Avaliação sensorial de formulações extemporâneas de medicamentos cardiovasculares preparadas com o veículo “gute” e utilizadas em pacientes pediátricos

Abstract

Many pediatric patients require medications that are not available in age appropriate formulations, especially those with cardiovascular diseases. Furosemide and Captopril generally are produced in solid dosage forms for adults, and need to be fractionated and transformed in suspensions for use in children. The use of a suitable vehicle is critical to the preparation of a homogeneous, stable and palatable extemporaneous formulation that can guarantee the expected effect. In this work was evaluated the acceptability of a vehicle, named Gute, developed by a research group from Universidade Federal do Ceará, considering that palatability is essential to treatment adherence in children. We analyzed the vehicle in different flavors with respect to the ability to mask the bitter taste of Captopril and Furosemide, the acceptance and preference without actives by healthy children and their parents, and the acceptance of extemporaneous formulations of the mentioned drugs administered to pediatric patients as prescribed. In the laboratory, eight panelists evaluated the masking ability of the vehicle flavored in mint, cherry, strawberry and neutral using a linear scale. ANOVA scores for bitterness intensity for captopril and furosemide showed that the flavored samples had significantly greater capacity of masking the bitter taste than the vehicle without flavor (neutral), however, there was no different between the flavors. 62 children 4-12 years and 21 guardians participated in the evaluation of the vehicle without actives flavored in mint, strawberry and cherry, using a facial-verbal hedonic scale with seven degrees. The three flavors were accepted and equally preferred by children and guardians. In hospitalized patients who received suspensions of Captopril (34) and furosemide (36), the flavors mint, strawberry and neutral acceptance was evaluated through the guardians with the hedonic scale and compared with the observation of the researcher .Suspensions in neutral and strawberry flavors were considered acceptable for both drugs. The correlation between the results from the two methods was moderate for Captopril, and absent Furosemide. The results for the neutral flavor showed that the addition of flavoring agents did not influenced in the acceptance and can be avoided in this case, an advantage in terms of safety for infants and neonates.