The dragees can be candy.
The dragee concept can be used in different ways. At a general level, the term refers to a very small portion of something that is ingested.
The dragees can be candies of different colors. These are sweets whose origins date back several centuries, although their characteristics vary according to the region and the time.
It is possible to find dragees made with sugar , starch, jelly and other ingredients. Many times these sweets have a hard layer that surrounds a soft substance inside. The layer and filling can even be different flavors.
Dragee in the pharmacy
In the field of pharmacy , a dragee is a dose of a medicine . These are tablets with one or more active ingredients that have therapeutic activity. The usual thing is that the dragee has a rounded shape and is coated with some type of substance with a pleasant flavor and texture.
The dragees have a specific size for proper consumption. Its preparation involves the compression and agglomeration of particles with a constant volume, making the tablet have a lot of storage capacity.
It should be noted that dragees are solid form drugs . The layer not only improves its flavor, but also provides protection to the active ingredient, which is protected from the environment. This layer even prevents disintegration of the medication in the mouth and minimizes gastrointestinal irritation.
Among the disadvantages are its cost, some people's difficulties in swallowing, and the incompatibility of certain drugs with a coating.
In the pharmacy field, dragees are solid drugs.
Similar terms
It is important to note that there are several terms that in everyday speech are often confused with dragee , either due to lack of information to distinguish them or due to lack of attention. We are talking about the following: tablets, tablets, lozenges , capsules and pills . Of course, in the field of translation of medical products, each of them must be treated according to their technical definition, according to which they present clear differences.
One of the reasons that leads people outside the field of medicine to confuse these words is that many Spanish dictionaries consider them synonyms , or at least they do not provide us with enough differences between them to know how to distinguish them when we have them in front of us. a pharmacy For example, we can begin by mentioning that translators recommend not using the term pill in scientific language, but rather reserving it for everyday speech.
Dragées, tablets, lozenges, capsules and pills
Before seeing the meaning of pill , we must talk about tablets , a mixture of several substances and the active ingredient itself (the medicine) that result in a product with a well-defined and stable shape over time. Their name derives from the fact that to manufacture them it is necessary to carry out a "compression" process, with a specific machine.
This brings us to the word pill , which is used in everyday speech as a synonym for tablet. Its name is simply the diminutive of pasta . There are lozenges to suck, which are solid and have at least one active ingredient, generally accompanied by ingredients that give it a sweet flavor to make its intake more pleasant, while it dissolves slowly in the mouth. Another way of referring to tablets is by the term tablets .
Precisely, dragees are tablets with substances whose odors, flavors or colors must be masked; For this, layers of some translucent and resinous substance such as lacquer are used.
Finally we have capsules (inert packages that are easy to open to access the contents, which are loose) and pills (solid, small, spherical drugs that must be swallowed whole).