How do you make antibiotic tablets?

Answer 1

At first glance the lay-person may think that making antibiotics is a simple task, after all penicillin comes from bread mold or fruit mold (it is actually in a liquid secreted by the mold rather than the mold itself).

However, antibiotics are VERY complex molecules to make and CAN NOT be manufactured at home. It took years for nobel prize winning chemists to figure out how to make quantities of penicillin, so I don't think you'll have much luck: sorry! Penicillin, for instance, takes a lot of post mold manufacturing and processing to refine it and remove any impurities.

If you want to know how tablets are made in general then that's pretty easy (most pharmacists are trained even if they never make them anymore). You start with the 'drug' you want to have as the main ingredient and then you add this to various compounds such as magnesium carbonate or calcium carbonate or common talc as bulkers, then add stabilizers, preservatives and colours etc. After that is done you can cold-press them or hot-press (metal presses that have tablet shaped negative dies) them depending on the ingredients used and the properties of melting in the GI tract that you want. A drug may be bound to other molecules that release it more slowly or else aids it's absorption into the blood stream. Finally you may coat the tablets with enteric coatings, colours, glycerin and the like to allow for smoother swallowing or else alter the release time or release location (most drugs are better released (tablet disolves) in the intestines rather than the stomach (many drugs can't pass the stomach lining or else are destroyed by the stomach's hydrochloric acid (btw, stomach acid is NOT sulpuric acid [aka, battery acid] as many people seem to think it is)

Hope this helps!

Fr33kman, MD

Almost all antibiotics that are manufactured for human consumption can be purchased for the treatment of livestock. Even though they state that they are not for human consumption they are identical in every way to what is used in the treatment of people. They have to be due to the nature of antibiotics. You can buy enough antibiotics at the feed store for $5 to treat your whole neighborhood. It is patently false that you need a license to possess tablet manufacturing equipment. You need a license to sell the equipment.

TheGold