Excipient E Numbers

Elio Sunset Yellow ECE 192, 198 E228 Potassium Bisulfite 608 

E120 Carmine 192 E260 Acetic Acid, Glacial 6 

E131 Patent Blue V 192 E281 Sodium Propionate 699 

E133 Brilliant Blue ECE 192 E283 Potassium Propionate 700 

E141 Copper Complexes of Chlorophylls and 192 E285 Sodium Borate 669 

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Excipients should be listed in the composition using their Ph Eur name (or one from another national pharmacopeia from an EEA member state), the International Nonproprietary Name, or an exact scientific designation, other than for materials such as preservatives or coloring agents which can be identified by an E-number. Third country pharmacopeial names may be acceptable. Coloring matter is subject to the provisions of specific legislation in the EEA. 

Only the first three are discussed in any detail here. Most of these routes of administration place a drug directly or indirectly into systemic circulation. There are a number of these routes, however, by which the drug exerts a local effect, in which case most of the drug does not enter systemic circulation (e.g., intrathecal, intraventricular, intraocular, intraracistemal). Certain routes of administration may exert both local and systemic effects depending on the characteristics of the drug and excipients (e.g., subcutaneous). 

Many pharmaceutical excipients are food additives or GRAS substances that have been used in foods for many years. The Handbook of Excipients provides information in the regulatory status section for the accepted uses of excipients in foods (27). In addition, Appendix II of the Handbook lists the E number for excipients that are approved as food additives in the EU. 

In this equation the weight of active substances (AS) and excipients (E) is given per suppository and n is the number of suppositories to be prepared. 

From Equation 28 it may be observed that the rate of drug release from an osmotically controlled system is directly proportional to the osmotic pressure within the tablet. As a result the osmotic pressure is an important design consideration for these systems. Osmotic pressure is a colligative property and is therefore dependent on the number of ions and molecules in solution. If the solubility of the drug is low, the inherent osmotic pressure within the tablet will be low and therefore the rate of drug release will be low. Under these conditions the inclusion of excipients, e.g., mannitol, sodium chloride, potassium chloride or hydrophilic polymers, is required within the tablet core. Upon dissolution within the tablet the osmotic pressure will increase thereby enhancing the rate of release of the therapeutic agent (a.47, a. 167). 

The SIMCA method has been developed to overcome some of these limitations. The SIMCA model consists of a collection of PCA models with one for each class in the dataset. This is shown graphically in Figure 10. The four graphs show one model for each excipient. Note that these score plots have their origin at the center of the dataset, and the blue dashed line marks the 95% confidence limit calculated based upon the variability of the data. To use the SIMCA method, a PCA model is built for each class. These class models are built to optimize the description of a particular excipient. Thus, each model contains all the usual parts of a PCA model mean vector, scaling information, data preprocessing, etc., and they can have a different number of PCs, i.e., the number of PCs should be appropriate for the class dataset. In other words, each model is a fully independent PCA model. 

Figure 4.50. Cumulative dissolution results. Two experimental tablet formulations were tested against each other in a dissolution test in which tablets are immersed in a stirred aqueous medium (number of tablets, consUuctional details and operation of apparatus, and amount of medium are givens). Eighty or more percent of the drug in either formulation is set free within 10 minutes. The slow terminal release displayed by formulation B could point towards an unwanted drug/excipient interaction. The vertical bars indicate yn,e-,n - L with iy 3% A simple linear/exponential model was used to approximate the data for the strength 2 formulation. Strengths 1 and 3 are not depicted but look very similar.

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