Beta-glucans are naturally belong to polysaccharides. The healing and immunostimulating properties of mushrooms have been known for thousands of years in the Eastern countries [1]. Chewable tablets are an interesting pharmaceutical dosage form for children that provide resistance consuming the tablets, for the older patients and the ones who have difficulty swallowing. The study samples were produced with sweet alcohol (sorbitol, and non-nutritive sweeteners such as stevia (rebaudioside A). Other used materials for tablets were Kollidon VA, Kollidon 30, citric acid and sodium stearyl fumarate. Granulates for tableting were made with two different sweeteners by wet (2 samples) or dry granulation (2 samples), and tablets were made by compressing on tablet laboratory machine. Tablets were made with content of 100 mg beta glucans. We also took two samples from Bosnian market. Analyses were conducted to determine the content of beta-glucan in chewable tablets with spectrophotometric method (colorimetric ß-(1,3;1,6)-glucan with Congo red) [2]. Test were performed according to method published by Nitschke et al. (2011). We also performed disintegration test according to European pharmacopoeia [3]. All results present as average values from 6 tablets for disintegration and 10 tablets for content. Obtained results are presented in Table 1.
Table 1: content of ß-(1,3;1,6)-glucan in tablets sample, and disintegration time
Results show that different sweeteners in the samples have not impact on content of beta-glucans as well as on disintegration test.
Keywords: Beta-glucans, chewable tablets, disintegration, content of beta-glucans
References:
[1] Akramiene D, Kondrotas A, Didziapetriene J, Kevelaitis E. Medicina (Kaunas) 2007; 43(8): 597-606
[2] Nitschke J, et al. Food Chem 2011; 127:791–796
[3] European Pharmacopoeia, 8th Edition, European Department for the Quality of Medicines, Council of Europe, 2015, Strasbourg.