Researchers have found a way to test for medication degradation or impurity with a $1 test

Orange County, CA - September 14th 2016 - Every year individuals worldwide are faced with the issue of substandard, spurious, falsely labelled, fraudulent and counterfeit (SSFFC) medications being sold to them. More than 300,000 deaths result from such duplicitous medications and no country is unaffected. Low income and developing countries are often hit the hardest.

The high cost of medication is making it harder for clients to safely acquire life-saving drugs and turning people to unsafe medication purchase methods. Unethical, backdoor, manufacturers or distributors are constantly producing these forgeries due to easy material access. The unscrupulous vendors replace expensive medications with cheaper and less effective alternatives, often lacking the active ingredient necessary for recovery.

Along with counterfeit medications, another issue of importance is pharmaceutical degradation.  Meaning medications are being improperly stored or outliving the proposed shelf life, but still reaching distribution. Though not detrimental to a patient’s health, the medicine’s desired effect is lost, and prevents proper treatment.

Researchers have found a way to test for medication degradation or impurity with a $1 test

People who don’t have access to the best-quality medicines also don’t have as many resources to buy the analytical instrumentation to detect the quality problems,” says Marya Lieberman, Ph.D., co-creator of a new test able to detect false medications.

Dr. Lieberman and Sarah Bliese have developed a paper test that can reliably tell a medication’s authenticity. For less than $1 USD to manufacture, the test is the size of a trading card, and has enough power to screen medications in real time. The test checks concentration of the ingredients, which allows for degraded medication or those containing filler to be detected. If the test were to only test for the presence of the necessary ingredients, the test wouldn’t be able to dictate whether it was safely proportioned or effective.

Testing a medication with the card is easy; researchers crush a pill and rub the powder across it’s surface before dipping the bottom in water for 3 minutes. The card contains twelve lanes separated by wax barriers, each containing a different set of reagents capable of detecting materials found in active pharmaceutical ingredients, degradation products, and common fillers. As the water wicks up the lanes, the medication combines with the reagents to form signaling colors. The test is then compared with a default pattern associated with that specific drug. The comparison can even be done by eye or with an image-analysis program on a smartphone. Lieberman has said that the cards could be applicable beyond analysis of medications.

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Researchers have found a way to test for medication degradation or impurity with a $1 test Orange County, CA – September 14th 2016 – Every year individuals worldwide are faced with the issue of substandard, spurious, falsely labelled, fraudulent and counterfeit (SSFFC) medications being sold to them. More than 300,000 deaths result from such duplicitous medications and […]