Unmet Quality Needs in Oral Drug Delivery: Contrasts of Drug Content and Uniformity on Distinct Approaches for Achieving Individual Dosing

Individualized dosing is often required in pharmacotherapy, particularly for pediatric and geriatric patients and adjustment of drugs that demand dose adaptation. This study aimed to evaluate critical quality attributes (CQAs) of doses obtained by distinct approaches for achieving individual dosing. Approaches were evaluated as follows: subdivision of tablets by splitter and hand (haloperidol) and delivery by plastic dropper bottle (haloperidol), glass dropper bottle (clonazepam), dosing cup (sodium valproate), and dosing syringe (carbamazepine), including brand name, generic, and similar marketed products. Measuring devices were packaged with their respective product. Drug content uniformity was assessed to each substance according to pharmacopeial methods. Tablets subdivided by splitter had the poorest performance among all approaches, in which doses ranged around 60% of the labeled amount (Acceptance Value = 58.1 and RSD = 23.2%). The greatest performances were observed for the dosing syringe which fulfilled all the requirements for dose precision and for the glass dropper bottle. There were significant differences in dose delivery between manufacturers of the same medicine when measuring the same volume or number of drops. High drug content variability is extremely harmful to pharmacotherapy and may result in therapeutic failure or toxicity. It is crucial that measuring devices and scoring of tablets be checked for functionality and standardized for different manufacturers of the same medicine. Part of the approaches for achieving individual dosing did not meet the quality needs for drug content and uniformity. Yet, our findings show that more accurate and precise dosing can be accessed when using the dosing syringe and glass dropper bottle.