Taste of Medicine has Effect
Suggested lead: Researchers say patients are less likely to take their medicine if it tastes bitter. Tom Britt has more.
Two psychologists at Duke University Medical Center say a little sugar, or even salt, can make bitter-tasting medicine a little easier to swallow. Susan Schiffman and Jennifer Zervakis say this becomes extremely important when dealing with the elderly and those with HIV. It turns out that many of the drugs prescribed for those two groups are especially bitter. The result is that some patients simply stop taking their medications. Schiffman says that bitter taste can also trigger the release of norepinephrine, a hormone associated with stress.
"So it means that a simple bitter taste will make you feel stressed, and if you feel stressed when you're tasting something, you're probably unlikely to want to repeat that experience. So again, it's an issue of compliance."
In addition to the bitter taste and the stress, another effect of some drugs is that once they reach the bloodstream, they distort the taste of foods, causing the patients to lose their appetite. Several pharmaceutical companies have already asked Schiffman and Zervakis to help them determine which drugs will be accepted, and taken, by patients. I'm Tom Britt.
Schiffman says refusing to take medication is especially a problem among those who do not feel sick.
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"It might be easier for us to force ourselves to take a bitter medication if we're really sick and we have a fever and we're feeling terrible. But with cardiovascular medication and hypertensive medication, you may not feel that bad and therefore you may just quit taking it because it's unpleasant-tasting"