Counterfeit homeopathic medicinal products: syrups. A simple and rapid LC-ESI-MS method to detect preservatives not declared in label

Simultaneous determination of synthetic food additives in kimchi by liquid chromatography-electrospray tandem mass spectrometry

A new analytical method was developed for the simultaneous determination of seven food additives (Ponceau 4R, Allura Red AC, Amaranth, 4-hydroxymethyl benzoic acid, ethyl-4-hydroxybenzoate, butyl-4-hydroxybenzoate, and saccharin sodium) in kimchi using high-performance liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry. The linearity, sensitivity, selectivity, precision, and accuracy of the method were validated. The limit of detection was 0.00004-0.24 μg/mL, and the limit of quantification was 0.00012-0.8 μg/mL. Recoveries ranged from 85.65 to 120.82%. The method was successful and may help to ensure food safety.

Chemometrics meets homeopathy--an exploratory analysis of infrared spectra of homeopathic granules

10 homeopathic remedies commercially available (each in 3 dilutions) as sugar granules, where half of them were of organic (and half inorganic) origin were subjected to solid-state infrared spectroscopy, both in middle infrared (ATR-FTIR) and near infrared (NIR) range. Measurements were repeated six times (six days, each sample was measured once in the same day, samples were measured in random order). The obtained spectra was subjected to unsupervised (PCA) and supervised (PLS-DA) chemometric techniques to check any visible differnces in spectral data between homeopathic remedies, including also feature selection approaches. It can be concluded that the only one information encoded in this dataset is the atmospheric drift of spectra between consecutive measurement days. This proves that homeopathy is not "infrared visible" in the case of proper experimental design. These results can be useful in further investigations of possible mechanisms of action of homeopathy (if they exist).

Understanding and fighting the medicine counterfeit market

Medicine counterfeiting is a serious worldwide issue, involving networks of manufacture and distribution that are an integral part of industrialized organized crime. Despite the potentially devastating health repercussions involved, legal sanctions are often inappropriate or simply not applied. The difficulty in agreeing on a definition of counterfeiting, the huge profits made by the counterfeiters and the complexity of the market are the other main reasons for the extent of the phenomenon. Above all, international cooperation is needed to thwart the spread of counterfeiting. Moreover effort is urgently required on the legal, enforcement and scientific levels. Pharmaceutical companies and agencies have developed measures to protect the medicines and allow fast and reliable analysis of the suspect products. Several means, essentially based on chromatography and spectroscopy, are now at the disposal of the analysts to enable the distinction between genuine and counterfeit products. However the determination of the components and the use of analytical data for forensic purposes still constitute a challenge. The aim of this review article is therefore to point out the intricacy of medicine counterfeiting so that a better understanding can provide solutions to fight more efficiently against it.

Determination of methylparaben from cosmetic products by ultra performance liquid chromatography

A new method for the determination of methylparaben by ultra-performance liquid chromatography (UPLC) was developed. Methylparaben is often used as preservative, alone or in combination with other parabens, being added to cosmetic products, pharmaceutical products and foods to avoid microbial contamination. Due to its widespread use and potential risk to human health, assessing human exposure to this compound is of interest. A good determination and quantification of methylparaben was developed with a gradient elution using a mixture of methanol and water (60:40, v/v) within 1.455 min. Under optimized conditions, the linear working range extends over two orders of magnitude with relative standard deviations of intra- and inter-day precision below 2.3 %, and a detection limit of 0.02 ng ?L-1 for methylparaben. The proposed method was successfully applied to the assay of methylparaben in cosmetic products with minimal sample preparation.