Sweetening Agents

• Sweetening agents or sweeteners are mainly used for masking the undesirable or bitter taste of any drug formulation and increase the patient acceptance towards pharmaceutical dosages form.
• In pediatric dosages form it is widely used because children prefer more the sweetening drugs.
• In Homeopathic medication , small sugar pills are used during the drug delivery. Recently it is widely used in the Ayurvedic medicine also.
• Sugar is the most widely used sweetening agent, due to its viscosity nature it also used as preservative for liquid preparation.

Classification of sweetening agents

• It is divided into two categories-
  • Natural sweetening agent- Glucose, fructose, sucrose, dextrose, sorbitol.
  • Artificial coloring agent- Sucralose, aspartame, saccharin.

Uses/Applications of sweetening agents

• Sweetening agent masking the undesirable or bitter taste.
• Increase the consumer acceptance.