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Film And Sugar Coating

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A sugar coating is basically is a thick, hard coating of sugar surrounding the tablet inside. It is no different in design in reality to the sugar coatings place on Smarties® or Minstrels ®. This is a traditional method which has been used to hide the flavour of particularly unpleasant tasting drugs e.g. ibuprofen and quinine, both of which are very bitter. The other advantage of a sugar coating is that it can prevent light or moisture from entering the tablet and therefore causing the drug to break down too quickly.

Due to the large increase in size of the tablet caused by sugar coating drug manufacturers have largely changed to using 'film coatings'. These are very thin layers of a safe ingredient placed around the tablet to again protect the tongue from the flavour of the contents and the contents from moisture and light. The film will however breakdown with a little agitation and significant amounts of moisture e.g. saliva or stomach acid and therefore does not significantly affect the way in which the drug is absorbed into the body.

Crushing these tablets therefore may not seriously effect how the drug is released but may cause the resultant mixture to be unpleasant to taste.