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Purpose: The purpose of the present study was to develop the quantitative prediction of the bitterness of antibiotics and bitterness-suppressing effect of taste masking using an artificial taste sensor.Firstly, the bitterness of nine commercial antibiotics was evaluated in human gustatory sensation tests with nine volunteers.The bitterness of 0.1-0.3 mM solutions of the antibiotics was then measured using an artificial multichannel taste sensor.In the sensor measurements, three variables were used to predict estimated bitterness in single and multiple regression analysis and principal component analysis: sensor output as relative value (R), the change of membrane potential caused by adsorption (C), and C/R.Particularly good correlation was obtained between obtained bitterness scores and predicted scores using C from channel 2 of the sensor (r2 =0.870, P<0.005), and C/R values for channels 2 and 3 (r2 =0.947,P<0.005).Secondly, we compared the bittemess of a commercially available clarithromycin dry syrup product, which contains aminoalkyl methacrylate polymer as a taste-masker, with clarithromycin powder suspensions, to evaluate the coating effectiveness for the bitterness.