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Currently, there are only six countries which have the proper tools and equipment and ensured high quality protective devices to know and detect counterfeit medicines from real ones. Needless to say, these countries are power houses in the field of medicine with advanced technology on their side. Of course, the United States is within the list as well as five European countries. With pharmaceutical counterfeiting becoming a serious issue in both developed and developing countries, procurement of these tools is of uttermost importance.
It is a big challenge among analytical laboratories to come up with proper tools to accurately detect and characterize medicines. Spectroscopic technique has always been the first method to be used but due to the fact that the number of seized counterfeit medicines has swelled as medicine fraud has become a lucrative business, hence the necessity of risk assessment tools, chromatography is the best and most suitable choice for experts.
Reviews have been conducted on the role of chromatography on the vital issue of counterfeiting. It has even been said that Food and Drugs Administration (FDA), World Health Organization (WHO) and other non-profit organizations as well as private pharmaceutical companies have been considering providing chromatographic equipment to countries and cities with high rate of drug smuggling within their boundaries. Among those considered to receive are Bangkok, Thailand’s main airports, Jakarta, Indonesia, Kenya and Beijing, China. In an interview with The Peterson Group, one of the NGOs who signed the petition, the agreement is almost on its last leg of approval. The public can only hope that the process be faster to implementation especially since analysts also stated that counterfeiting, which is an international trade, is already in its permanent growth. Chromatography is one of their solutions to possible stopping of this market.
For years, chromatographic techniques have been extensively used in illegal pharmaceutical preparations. When it was only used to detect counterfeit of herbal medicines, it is also found to be accurate in its findings with drugs as well. In the majority of published papers, chromatographic techniques were used for the separation of active ingredients in the samples, to quantify them, to isolate the active ingredients or to detect or identify with mass spectrometry, for example.
Chromatographic method includes different technique: Thin-layer chromatography which is used to identify counterfeits by comparing samples from the fraud and real drugs; and liquid chromatography is used for target analysis of probable two or more compounds.
