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Norvir Advisory
Taste & Aftertaste Questions & Answers
from Presentation 3, Norvir Community Update
QUESTION: Can you do anything to improve the taste of the liquid?
SUN: None of the protease inhibitors are easy drugs to formulate. This is why you don't see the
other protease inhibitors being formulated as liquids. You have to use ingredients that do not taste
particularly good. If you are trying to formulate a liquid that is bioavailable, it must be capable of
being absorbed. This requires solvents that often have an unpleasant flavor.
We initially tried nearly 200 different formulations with ritonavir to find that acceptable range
between something that people could stomach as well as something that met the technical criteria
that we needed. I will be one the first to admit that ritonavir doesn't taste good. All the people from
Abbott here have tasted it. We even have people here that have tasted it every day for weeks to be
able to better understand what some patients have contend with. We are all aware of the problem.
Later you will hear about the results of a taste panel to find, in a systematic way, food items or
tricks, that people have found to be helpful in at least masking the taste. However, we are limited
to some extent by the solvents that we have to use to make the formulation.
Posted 12/28/98
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