“…Although hydrolysis is the most frequent degradation reaction in aqueous pharmaceutical formulations, other factors may also decrease the antimicrobial activity of the parabens such as sorption onto solid9–11 and plastic container,12–14 solubilization by nonionic surfactants,15–17 partitioning into flavoring oils,18 and perhaps more importantly interaction/reaction with excipients. A wide range of excipients have been reported to interact/react with parabens, which include cellulose derivatives,19 ethanol,20 ethanolamine,21 β‐cyclodextrin,22 and sugar alcohols (or polyols) 23–26. In this article, we report the interaction of methylparaben with selected sugars through transesterification reaction, which to our best knowledge has not been reported in the literature.…”