A team from the Monell Chemical Senses Center conducted a study to determine if the diabetes drug rosiglitazone could help block the bitter taste of certain medications. They found that adding rosiglitazone to medicines could reduce bitterness for many research participants. This discovery is significant because the bitter taste of some drugs can be a barrier to taking medications as prescribed, especially for those who are sensitive to bitter tastes. The study used human cells from taste tissue to screen for potential bitter blockers, with rosiglitazone being identified as a promising candidate.
Senior author Danielle Reed emphasized the importance of testing the effectiveness of bitter blockers on a diverse range of people from different parts of the world. This is critical to ensure that efforts to reduce bitterness in medicines are successful for all populations. The team’s experiments on research participants in the United States and Poland showed that while rosiglitazone was not effective for everyone, it did help to reduce bitterness for many individuals. Having multiple bitter blockers to choose from may help in entirely suppressing the bitterness of medicines for various populations and ancestries.
The team’s findings indicate that using a mixture of bitter blockers could potentially achieve a low-to-zero bitterness standard for even the most unpleasant-tasting medications. Although rosiglitazone was only partially effective as a bitter blocker in this study, there is optimism that modifying the drug could lead to a more potent and palatable version. Rosiglitazone is already approved worldwide for treating diabetes, making it a valuable tool in making medicines easier to take for individuals who struggle with bitter tastes.
Future research in this area will focus on studying the bitter-blocking effects of rosiglitazone on several hundred African and Asian immigrants to further diversify the participants’ ancestries with regard to taste perception. This will help to ensure that efforts to reduce bitterness in medications are effective for a wide range of populations. The study was supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health, as well as grants from the Monell Chemical Senses Center’s Carol M. Christensen Postdoctoral Fellowship in Human Chemosensory Science Fund and institutional funds from the organization.
