Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

My project is seeing whether gel capsules or traditional pills dissolve the quickest in the bloodstream. I need to know how to make a bloodstream out of household items in a glass and so i can conduct my expirement without using actual humans.
i would appreciate some help

Hi,
Sounds like a fun project. Do you plan to test the rate of dissolution of the pills / capsules in gastric acid, or the rate of absorption of the dissolved medicine into blood through the intestinal wall, or both? Either way, I'm sure we can help you come up with an experimental design.

Chris

I need to know what i can use as a substitution for a bloodstream because I am also trying to find out which type of vitamin C pill dissolves faster in the bloodstream and need soem help on tryin to figure out what to use as a substitute.

Hi,

I think there is a little bit of confusion going on here. In your project title you state that you want to look at which will dissolve faster after being ingested, the gel cap or the regular vitamin but in your post you are talking about the bloodstream so lets just think first about how things work in the body.

Yes, the most important thing about how the vitamin works is will it get to the cells around the body and to do that it will need to be carried in the bloodstream somehow. But the vitamin is not injected into the bloodstream directly if it is a pill it has to go in the mouth and the stomach and then have things happen to make it available to be absorbed through the stomach or intestine wall into the bloodstream. WHat kind of things happen in the mouth and the stomach - there is mechanical disruption, chewing in the mouth and churning in the stomach, and there is chemical disiruption from enzymes in both the mouth and the stomach and from acid in the stomach. Then there are various different ways that nutirents like the vitamin C get from the stomach into the blood stream - sometimes there is a special carrier protein in the cells in the stomach wall that binds on to the nutrient and takes it across to the bloodstream and sometimes the nutrients are small enough to diffuse into the stomach wall cells, across the blood vessel wall cells and into the bloodstream. But at that point the vitamin looks nothing like the pill, it has been broken down into the ingredients.

It would actually be pretty hard to measure how the ingredients of the different pills get into the bloodstream in an arificial bloodstream - in fact when pharmaceutical companies make the vitamins they usually test those kinds of things by giving the vitamin pill to animals or humans and testing the amount of components in the blood. But they do look at how the pills would dissolve in the stomach in an artificial or substitute system.

WHy don't you search to see what you can find on the internet about making simulation of a stomach. I mentioned that the stomach has acid in it - can you find out what kind of acid and what the pH is? What would be a safe type of container to use as your stomach so that the acid doesn't escape and burn you? How do you think you could make your stomach "churn"?

I hope this is helpful. Post back with your ideas.
Best of luck,
Caroline