These
led to reduce the drug loss from the beads. To compare with
the effect of sodium starch glycolate (SSG) on DS entrapment
efficiency of the DCA beads, which was reported previously
(Puttipipatkhachorn et al., 2005), the XG–DCA beads provided
higherDSentrapment efficiency than the SSG–DCA beads. This
was the effect of polymer structure and molecular weight. SSG
is a linear polymer with molecular weight around (5–10)×105,
whereas XG had a trisaccharide side chain polymer with high
molecular weight (2×106).