Word: gelatine
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Thousands of different kinds of nonprescription capsules continue to be sold today. In all, Americans bought about 10.5 billion doses of these gelatin-cased medications last year. Among the leading brands: Contac (made by SmithKline Beckman), and Sinutab and Benadryl (both made by Warner-Lambert). Nearly all over-the-counter drugs are two-piece capsules, although the single- piece model, used for some vitamins, is perhaps safer. If anyone were to try ; to pierce a single-piece shell, it would probably leak and be very difficult to seal again. In tampering with two-piece capsules, a criminal might be able...
...sealed plastic around the tops of the bottles. Later came other ideas. R.P. Scherer, a capsule manufacturer, developed a "soniseal" machine that uses sonic waves to weld the two pieces of a capsule together. Eli Lilly last year made available to U.S. manufacturers a similar technique. A band of gelatin is placed around the waist of the capsule, where the two pieces overlap. That makes it tougher to open the casing without leaving a mark. But companies were slow to adopt the new technology, apparently because they thought that sealing the pill bottles was sufficient protection...
...company says that Contac will be back on the market this fall. The new capsules will have a transparent coat and will be sealed with red gelatin, which will make it more difficult for anyone to tamper with them. For those who are still wary, Contac will also be available for the first time in elongated tablets called caplets...
...huge consumer demand for capsules still exists despite the Tylenol scare. Many people find the gelatin-cased medicine easier to swallow and less bitter than tablets. The bright color combinations of capsules also make them more readily identifiable. Moreover, because so many prescription medicines come in capsule form, a common--but false--impression has arisen that capsules are more effective than tablets...
...greater safety, several companies have devised methods of sealing the individual capsules to make them tamper resistant. Eli Lilly has developed a tiny belt of gelatin that binds, like a piece of tape, the top and bottom halves and makes it difficult to open a capsule without tearing it. Sterling Drug uses sound waves to create a kind of spot-weld on capsules of its Panadol pain reliever. Johnson & Johnson says that it too studied new methods of sealing capsules but decided that none was completely secure...