Why hasn’t anyone marketed liquid ibuprofren? The closest we have are “liquicaps” or “liqui gels” that are aborbed faster- but why not a robitussin-like bottle of it? It would truly be a five-minute headache cure with how quickly it’d be absorbed.
Liquid ibuprofen is on the market in the robitussin-like bottle you describe. The quickest example I can find is Children’s Motrin Ibuprofen Oral Suspension, Dye-Free Berry Flavor.
From Motrin’s faq:
However, there’s a noticeable lack of “Adult-Strength Liquid Ibuprofen”, and I don’t know why that is so. I’m curious about this myself, and have emailed Motrin for an answer.
Just speculation, but a bottle of adult-strength ibuprofren would probably contain enough to be deadly if a child got a hold of it and drank it down. So why would a company expose themselves to the liability (from our sue-happy society) of this?
It’s not likely that this would result in any net increase in their sales, since the customers for the liquid version will just come from their existing customers for the capsules or gels.
The purpose of most pills, in all their varied forms, is to buffer the actual medication against the acids in the stomach to allow them to reach the intestines intact, where they can be absorbed.
Liquid formulations are usually not as effective as pills are.
My surmise (stronger than a WAG) is that since children have less stomach acidity and need smaller dosages in the first place, a liquid ibuprofen is feasible for them but problematical for adults.
I could also see an adult with a headache taking a huge overdose of liquid medicine even though they wouldn’t take, say, twenty pills…
Tylenol makes an adult-strength liquid, so I doubt that’s the reason.
Liquids can be buffered too.
Do you have a cite for the assertion that liquid formulations are usually not as effective as pills?
Tylenol is acetaminophen, not ibuprofen.
He didn’t say it was ibuprofen. He was answering the hypothesis that people might drink the equivalent of 20 tablets if there was a liquid version, and they can certainly do that for liquid versions of Tylenol (and OD’ing on Tylenol is not a pleasant experience).