Statement of Purpose The purpose of this experiment is to determine whether over the counter pain killers, for example, aspirin, coated aspirin and fast acting aspirin dissolve at different rates affected by the level of acidity in the solvent. Background Research and Theory Drug Solubility is important to patients as well as to manufacturers because drugs, in this case, pain killers, have to dissolve to pass into the blood stream for the medication to take effect. The enhancement of solubility of a prescribed drug increases its oral bio-availability – its availability to be used by the body. Achieving greater bio-availability makes for a challenge to the drug development process especially for oral (by mouth) -drug delivery system. There are several techniques available and reported in literature to enhance the solubility of poorly water-soluble drugs. The methods are selected on the basis of certain aspects such as properties of drug under consideration, and whether they will …show more content…
This has interesting implications regarding the aqueous solubility of the acid, since the un-ionized form is much less soluble than its salt. Of further interest, therapeutically, is the fact that it is the un-dissociated acid (HA) that more readily penetrates biological tissues to exert a therapeutic effect. Thus, in formulating the product, the manufacturer must strike a balance between the more soluble salt form and the biologically active acid and factors other than pKa and pH must be considered (e.g. safety and comfort). For researchers and manufacturers, there are ways around lack of solubility. (Gao, 2014) Solubility can vary based on other things such as surface area exposed to the solvent. Pain killers are readily soluble and there is no allowance for differences in surface area between the different sized