Glossary of terms related to pharmaceutics (IUPAC Recommendations 2009)

Abstract

This Glossary of Terms in Pharmaceutics is needed by practitioners in the field of pharmaceutics as this field fulfills an important and crucial role, different from the roles of other scientific disciplines involved in the drug-making process. The glossary contains 168 definitions used in pharmaceutics. These are related to various aspects of this discipline such as: (1) physicochemical characterization of pharmaceutical preparations and the active ingredients they contain; (2) unit operations used in the practice of pharmaceutics; (3) terms related to the various dosage forms; (4) terms related to the various modes and routes of drug delivery; (5) terms used in pharmacokinetics and biopharmaceutics in general, and additional miscellaneous terms. The field of pharmaceutics itself is of a multidisciplinary nature as its practitioners come from a variety of disciplines, such as chemistry or various biological sciences, thus a glossary containing authoritative definitions would be useful for them. The terms used in pharmaceutics are rarely covered by existing glossaries, and in the cases they are, their definitions are often inappropriate for the field of pharmaceutics and require new or modified definitions to better fit the new context.