ABSTRACT:
The main objectives of this study is to record, analyze, and compare the trend of published scientific research articles conducted on different routes of administrations, various oral dosage forms and conventional tablets, during 1980-2012 and try to explain possible reasons leading to such trend. In this study, PubMed, has been used as a search tool for published scientific articles, using different keywords related to different routes of administrations, various oral dosage forms and conventional tablets. Analysis of the searched published articles, showed almost a regular increasing annual publication pattern of the oral route compared to other routes. The domination of the oral route may be due to the access-ability, convenience and safety of this route compared to other routes. The percutaneous route was ranked second. This is may be attributed to the invention of transdermal devices or patches during 1980s, that drew a lot of attention from researchers through years succeeding 1980. The increase in the publication percentage growth rate for parenteral route, during 1988–1992, may be attributed to research focusing on recombinant DNA technology needed to develop new biotechnology drug products, where most of these drugs are orally inactive and are thus taken parenterally. The annual number of published articles for intraocular, intranasal, pulmonary, rectal and vaginal routes showed low profiles throughout the period of study. Published articles on different oral dosage forms indicated that tablets are superior, reflecting the diversity of modifications that can be applied to such dosage forms. The annual number of published articles for syrups and suspensions kept very low profile, which indicates that oral liquid dosage forms, pose no formulation modification challenges for scientists to add.Published articles on different conventional tablets including chewable, effervescent, sublingual and immediate release tablets showed that chewable and effervescent tablets, exhibit very low total publication numbers throughout the period of study, while immediate release tablets were rankedtop.