When asked the specific question “Did your mouth feel soothed?”, a high proportion of subjects taking either the

strawberry (87 %) or orange (67 %) lozenge reported that their throat had been soothed by the lozenge. When the subjects were asked how the medicine had made their throat feel, their responses were broadly similar for both lozenges; the proportion of subjects whose throat felt “normal”, whose throat BVD-523 ic50 felt “not different”, or who did not know was 41 and 32 % for the strawberry- and orange-flavored lozenges, respectively (Table 3). These results were XAV 939 expected, as the study was conducted in healthy volunteers. Table 3 Subjects’ responses to the questions “How did it make your mouth feel?” and “How did it make your throat feel?” Comment Percentage of subjects selecting each score Mouth Throat Strawberry-flavored lozenge (n = 102) Orange-flavored lozenge (n = 102) Strawberry-flavored lozenge (n = 102) Orange-flavored lozenge (n = 102) Normal/not different/don’t know 36 6

41 32 Generally positive Sepantronium 19 9 26 19 Smooth/soothed/soft/calm 5 3 16 14 Tingly/numb 17 24 6 12 Generally negative 4 14 4 6 Hot 3 12 NR NR NR not reported No AEs were reported in this study, which is in accordance with the well-established safety profile of AMC/DCBA lozenges. 4 Discussion The palatability of medications, particularly those taken orally, is an important factor in determining medication adherence and completion of drug therapy in young children, and should be an important part in the development

process of new pediatric formulations [16]. This taste-testing study was based on well-recognised and accepted techniques for evaluating the taste of pediatric formulations [30, 31] and, based on the results of this study, would seem to be applicable to lozenge formulations. In this study, a high proportion (85.3 %) of the children rated the strawberry-flavored lozenge as tasting ‘good’, much ‘really good’, or ‘super good’. These results are consistent with those of other studies of strawberry-flavored medications in children. For example, in an assessment of antibiotics, Angelilli et al. [22] found that a strawberry-flavored cefixime preparation was most commonly rated as the best tasting when compared with cherry-, bubble gum- and banana-flavored preparations in children aged 5–8 years. In a further study, strawberry-flavored lansoprazole suspension and tablets were preferred by over 90 % of children (5–11 years), compared with peppermint-flavored ranitidine syrup [26, 27]. In another study, significantly more children (aged 3–12 years) preferred strawberry-flavored ondansetron syrup to grape-flavored syrup [25].