THE proverbial bitter pill may just get a little bit smaller and easier to swallow. A Japanese company has developed a new method for giving pharmaceuticals the form of tablets. And tablets developed through this system will not only disintegrate readily in the mouth, making it possible to have them without water, but will also be smaller. The company hopes to achieve this by cutting down on substances that have to be added to the tablet to make them easier to swallow (Science & Technology in Japan, Vol 18, No 69).

The method has been developed by Kyowa Hakko Kogyo Co Ltd of Japan, and is known as External Lubrication System (exlub). The company is going to introduce this method all over the world.

Tablets are compacted by a tableting machine from the mixture of an active ingredient with a