Modified Release
Traditional dosage forms require multiple daily dosing to achieve the desired blood concentration to produce therapeutic activity. The development of modified release coatings has meant both a decrease in the number of required daily doses and a significant reduction in side effects. This is enhancing the experience for the consumer and also reduces the risk of insufficient treatments.
The advantages of modified release coatings in short means:
- fewer doses
- fewer pills to take daily
- a reduction in side effects
- innovation recognition
- an understanding and willingness to improve products for their consumers
- a premium market offering with quicker consumer repurchase rate
Whether your goal is to increase patient compliance, improve clinical outcomes, or to extend a product’s life cycle, modified-release dosage forms present a solution to myriad challenges. The trick is to understand the influence of both drug property and delivery technology on drug design, and to give you enough time to select and introduce the ideal release form for both therapeutic and economic advantage.
Unlike immediate-release forms, which act quickly, modified-release forms are intended to act over a longer time or delay action until they have reached a specific area – the stomach, small intestine, or colon, for example.
Modified-release dosage forms have been developed to deliver drugs to the part of the body where it will be absorbed, to simplify dosing schedules, and to assure that concentration of the drug is maintained over an appropriate time interval.
The pattern of drug release from modified-release dosage forms is deliberately changed from that of a conventional immediate-release dosage formulation to achieve a desired therapeutic objective or better patient compliance. Types of modified release drug products include sustained release, extended release and controlled release.
A modified-release dosage form is a formulation in which the drug release characteristics of time course and/or location are chosen to accomplish therapeutic or convenience objectives not offered by conventional dosage forms such as solutions, ointments, or promptly dissolving dosage forms.