No, liquid medication is not more effective than capsules

When you visit your local pharmacy to purchase over-the-counter medicine, you’ll typically find that you can buy many medications in liquid, capsule or tablet form.

But some TikTok users want to know if liquid medication, like DayQuil or NyQuil, is more effective than capsules.

THE QUESTION

Is liquid medication more effective than capsules?

THE SOURCES

• Orlando Clinical Research Center
• Procter & Gamble's Vicks, the makers of DayQuil and NyQuil
• Phillip Gerk, Ph.D., professor and vice chairman of the Virginia Commonwealth University Department of Pharmaceutics

THE ANSWER

No, liquid medication is not more effective than capsules.

WHAT WE FOUND

Liquid and capsules contain the same amount of medicine and work equally well to treat an illness, according to medical researchers, but liquid medicine absorbs marginally faster than capsules.

When the human body begins to metabolize a medication, different organs process the ingredients before they are finally released into the bloodstream, according to the Orlando Clinical Research Center. The vast majority of over-the-counter cold and flu medications are taken orally and are broken down within the gastrointestinal tract at different rates, the research center says.

Cold and flu medication is generally administered as a liquid syrup, a liquid-filled capsule, or as a solid tablet or pill. VERIFY checked the labels of DayQuil and NyQuil Cold & Flu Relief, which are sold in liquid and liquid-filled capsule form, and we found that both forms contained the same amount of medication for an adult dose — the only difference is how quickly the medicine is absorbed.

“In terms of speed of absorption, generally, the liquid would be the fastest, liquid caps would be second, and then tablets and capsules would be third,” said Phillip Gerk, Ph.D., vice chairman of the Virginia Commonwealth University Department of Pharmaceutics.

Each 30-milliliter dose of DayQuil Cold & Flu liquid medicine contains 650 milligrams of acetaminophen (pain reliever/fever reducer), 20 milligrams of dextromethorphan HBr (cough suppressant), and 10 milligrams of phenylephrine HCI (nasal decongestant). Two DayQuil liquid-filled capsules contain the same ingredients.

Meanwhile, each 30-milliliter dose of NyQuil Cold & Flu liquid medicine contains 650 milligrams of acetaminophen, 30 milligrams of dextromethorphan HBr, and 12.5 milligrams of doxylamine succinate 12.5 mg (antihistamine). Two NyQuil liquid-filled capsules contain the same ingredients. Generic versions of the medications also contain the same formulations. 

The Orlando Clinical Research Center explains that after an oral medication is taken, it is broken down by stomach acids before it passes through the liver and enters the bloodstream. Gerk says liquid absorbs faster than liquid-filled capsules or tablets because “basically, it just has to mix with the body fluid,” while the others have shells that have to break open or dissolve first.

But he says the timing between how long it takes for liquid, liquid-filled capsules and tablets to fully dissolve “doesn't make much of a difference.”

“So amongst those three different types of dosage forms that I mentioned, we're talking about a difference of really a few minutes, rather than hours,” Gerk told VERIFY.

So, we can VERIFY that liquid medication is not more effective than capsules, but it can provide marginally faster relief.