The unpleasant taste of certain medications can make it difficult for people to take them as directed, especially for those who are very sensitive to bitter flavors. A study revealed that the diabetes drug rosiglitazone could partially reduce the bitter taste of some especially unpalatable medications. Researchers hope that existing drugs could be repurposed and added in small amounts to other medicines to make them less bitter and more palatable, ultimately improving adherence to bitter drug regimens.The diabetes drug rosiglitazone has been found to have a bitter-blocking effect on some particularly unpleasant-tasting medications, as reported in the journal Clinical Therapeutics. Researchers from the Monell Chemical Senses Center discovered that rosiglitazone could be used in small doses to improve the taste of other medicines. This finding is significant as there have been no previous reports on the bitter-blocking effect of this drug, according to first author Ha Nguyen, PhD, Monell Postdoctoral Fellow. Rosiglitazone’s potential as a bitter blocker was identified through various tests.HTML remains as it is, only the text is changed:
Human cells from the taste tissue were used in a screening method developed by Monell and DiscoveryBiomed, Inc., now Eurofins. The team conducted taste-testing experiments on research participants in the United States and Poland. They found that the addition of rosiglitazone to the medicines reduced bitterness for many, but not all, research participants.
Danielle Reed, PhD, Monell Chief Science Officer, stated, “People differ, and we need to test many types of people from different parts of the world to make sure that efforts to reduce bitterness and make medicines easier to take work well for all people.”
These findings indicate that efforts to reduce bitterness in medicines may not work uniformly for all individuals.Having a variety of blockers to choose from can completely reduce the bitterness of many medications for different populations and backgrounds. Combining multiple blockers can help achieve a standard of low-to-zero bitterness for even the most bitter medications.
“While rosiglitazone was only partially effective as a bitter blocker in this study, altering these drugs to enhance potency, palatability, and effectiveness may lead to a better version of this drug,” stated Nguyen. “Rosiglitazone is valuable as a bitter blocker because it has the potential to be effective in most people and belongs to a class of drugs that is already approved.”Improved Diabetes Treatment methods have been approved globally. Future research will involve conducting a similar study on bitter blocking involving a larger and more diverse group of participants, including several hundred African and Asian immigrants. This study was funded by the National Institutes of Health (R42 DC017693), the Monell Chemical Senses Center’s Carol M. Christensen Postdoctoral Fellowship in Human Chemosensory Science Fund, and Monell Chemical Senses Center Institutional Funds. The details of this research can be found in the journal reference.In an article published in Clinical Therapeutics in 2024, Catherine Bell, Amy Huang, Emilia Leszkowicz, Nancy E. Rawson, and Danielle R. Reed discuss the partial effectiveness of thiazolidinediones as bitter blockers. The DOI for the article is 10.1016/j.clinthera.2024.02.002.