Right off the bat let me state that I know nothing about this stuff. That being said, the following strikes me as ineffective or at least not cost-effective.
I sometimes have trouble sleeping because of pain so I bought some excedrin-pm type medicine. It came in capsule form. The first one I took made me drowsy the next morning. So I decided to take a half the next night. Being capsules, I figured I could pull one apart and take half of what was inside.
Imagine my surprise at finding a fully pressed capsule instead of the hundreds of little pellets I was expecting. I understand that a gel coating might make them go down a little easier but it doesn’t seem to be best way to do it cost-wise.
But then again, I’m clueless about manufacturing. Thoughts?
I often buy acetaminophen in a similar “capsule” looking form, but I am pretty positive that there is a solid tablet of the medicine beneath the outer coating of those, just like in your picture.
Capsules which actually contained little granules of medicine inside of them were common up until the early 1980s – the cold medicine Contac was positioned that way (they called them “tiny time pills”), and Tylenol offered a similar, capsule-based version of their acetaminophen. But, in 1982, someone (who was never caught) tampered with some of those those Tylenol capsules in the Chicago area, placing cyanide inside of them, which led to seven deaths by poisoning. This caused OTC capsules like those to rapidly fall out of favor, as well as leading to better tamper-proof packaging.
Is it particularly inefficient to manufacture “caplets” with an outer coating which looks like two-part capsules? I am guessing not, as they do seem to still be a staple of generic/store brand OTC meds.
I trust the drug companies know an awful lot about profitability. If they also sell the same thing without a coating, it may well be very cost effective. A coating might make it look nice, be easier on the stomach, allow alternate marketing or higher prices, aid swallowing, reduce first pass metabolism or help it dissolve further down the GI tract if this is an advantage, as in Crohn’s, etc. Certainly any costs would be passed on to the consumer. I suspect whole pills might be more common than little balls - which I associate with certain antihistamines and decongestants.
I’ve never come across one of these, but from a quick identification search it looks like this is what your photo is of:
From a bit more searching it seems like this is more about timing the release of the drug. I’d call this a tablet in a capsule, and some quick searching led to this study:
It does make taking a half-dose difficult. And it seems like it would lead to delayed effects, which could lead to being drowsy in the morning, so maybe switch from the Target brand.
Try taking an extended release acetaminophen dose before bed, the extended release should help with the pain for close to 8 hours, allowing you to (hopefully) sleep. If you feel you need the soporific effects of the diphenhydramine to fall asleep, buy some separately and take one, which should be 25mg. Uncoupling the two drugs might help the diphenhydramine be fully processed and less likely to cause morning drowsiness.
Most likely, this tablet has an immediate-release layer, to give you an initial dose, and then a slow-release layer to keep you asleep longer (which may also explain the morning drowsiness).
Might want to break the tablet in half and find out.
Industry retiree here. The only reason I ever saw this done was to disguise a comparator drug in clinical trials - a simple way to blind the patient as to what they were taking. So I guess the technology to do it exists.
One of the reasons capsule formulations are used in preference to tablet formulations is if the drug tastes really awful. Usually that can be solved either by using a capsule or by coating a tablet. But you can just about imagine a circumstance where a tablet is technically preferred to a capsule formulation (for manufacturing reasons, say) but for some reason or other, coating the tablet to hide the awful taste presents another major technical problem. Putting the tablet inside a capsule would be a solution. But I can’t think of an example of a commercial product manufactured like that. (I see hits in google which seem to suggest there may be a Macrobid product which is like this).
Regarding the fight against ignorance, you might want to take one for the team and give it a taste. (Joke.)
