Capsules are enclosed shells mainly made up of gelling agents that can provide suitable human conditions inside a human stomach. They enclose a pharma product without any additional mechanism, material or manufacturing process.
The types of medication that can be contained inside the capsule shell can be many, such as powder, granules, liquid or a combination of these. The selection of material inside it depends on the drug requirement, disease to be cured and target patient population.
Capsules are common in oral pharmaceutical dosage forms, among others. Various variants of solid oral dosage used in the pharmaceutical industry can take different forms. Some oral forms can only be administered in capsules, while others can only be administered in tablets. Some oral forms can be administered in both tablets and capsules.
Advantages of capsule in pharmaceutical industry
Before we discuss the selection criteria for capsule in pharmaceutical industry, let's briefly discuss some advantages of capsules
Easy to encapsulate drugs
Capsules provide an easy and convenient way to encapsulate a drug inside it. The main reason is that various capsule processing equipment, such as filling machines, can be selected for a specific product.
Additionally, the chemical composition of drugs and material categorization of capsule shell makes it easy for pharma manufacturers to encapsulate the pharma product with desired characteristics such as rate, time and location of drug release inside a patient’s body. These material and chemical characteristics can easily be altered if proper equipment is unavailable, given the regulatory and quality guidelines allow them to do so.
Fast acting
Capsules, compared to other forms of oral dosage, act fast to cure the disease and relieve the patient. There is a significant lead time for tablets related to tablet disintegration inside the stomach and the final impact on curing the disease.
On the other hand, capsules are easily integrated and become part of human metabolism inside the human stomach. Their shells comprise natural agents that facilitate easy integration of the material encapsulated. This decreases the lead time in dissolving the drug inside the stomach, subsequently curing the disease and giving relief to patients.
Easy product development
Product development is easy for the capsule form of oral dosage and does not require complex tasks compared to tablets, such as tablet integration, stability and quality checks. The encapsulated material only needs development at the initial stages, often performed in the granulation stage.
Capsule shells are pre–qualified by the supplier as a part of their responsibility. So it decreases the final steps, time and cost of capsule product development. This advantage increases the share of pharma manufacturers in revenue, profit, high quality and timely delivery of the products compared to its competitors.
Multiple fill options
Capsules provide options for filling different dosage forms in a single capsule without worrying about product compromise and quality issues. Each strength of a product can be consumed differently from the other without disturbing the quality or efficacy of one product.
For tablets, it is not easy and only becomes possible after detailed activity to study the impact of one product on other. Only when it is scientifically proved that different dosage strengths and forms cannot affect each other and are safe for human consumption can they be combined in a single tablet form.
Require fewer steps then tablets
Capsule manufacturing requires fewer steps as compared to ...
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