Fatal Intoxications Due to Administration of Isosorbide Tablets Contaminated with Pyrimethamine

Medicine recalls in Saudi Arabia: a retrospective review of drug alerts (January 2010–January 2019)

Background

A new incidence of a substandard medicinal product is discovered weekly as stated by the World Health Organization (WHO) around the world. After discovering an incidence of a substandard medicinal product, a drug recall announced to remove the affected medicinal product from the market. Drug recalls in SaudiArabia (SA) are made by the Saudi Food and Drug Authority (SFDA) or the distributors of the drug when certain criteria are met. A retrospective study of drug recalls in SA was carried out. Data were collected through a website search of the SFDA for drug recalls since January 2010–January 2019.

Results

SFDA recalled 84 substandard medicinal products which related to 47 alert letters and 52 drugs. The number of drug recall reported by SFDA increased six-folds in 2018 than in 2010. The major frequent therapeutic class of drug recall was the antihypertensive drugs followed by the antibiotic drugs (27.7% and 10.8%, respectively). The majority of the recalls were tablets followed by parenteral dosage forms (58% and 25%, respectively). The major reasons for the drug recalls were due to contamination (32.14%) followed by non-compliance with manufacturer’s specifications (20.48%). Two manufacturers were accounted for 34.52% of all recalled drugs.

Conclusion

Substandard medicinal products are considered as a serious problem in SA. Contamination was the main cause of drug recalls, which requires root investigation of causes and for strict protective tools to be applied by drug manufacturers.

New derivatives of the antimalarial drug Pyrimethamine in the control of melanoma tumor growth: an in vitro and in vivo study

Background

The antimalarial drug Pyrimethamine has been suggested to exert an antitumor activity by inducing apoptotic cell death in cancer cells, including metastatic melanoma cells. However, the dose of Pyrimethamine to be considered as an anticancer agent appears to be significantly higher than the maximum dose used as an antiprotozoal drug.

Methods

Hence, a series of Pyrimethamine analogs has been synthesized and screened for their apoptosis induction in two cultured metastatic melanoma cell lines. One of these analogs, the Methylbenzoprim, was further analyzed to evaluate cell-cycle and the mechanisms of cell death. The effects of Methylbenzoprim were also analyzed in a severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID)-mouse xenotransplantation model.

Results

Low dose of Methylbenzoprim was capable of inducing cytotoxic activity and a potent growth-inhibitory effect by arresting cell cycle in S-phase in melanoma cells. Methylbenzoprim was also detected as powerful antineoplastic agents in SCID-mouse although used at very low dose and as a single agent.

Conclusions

Our screening approach led to the identification of a “low cost” newly synthesized drug (methylbenzoprim), which is able to act as an antineoplastic agent in vitro and in vivo, inhibiting melanoma tumor growth at very low concentrations.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13046-016-0409-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.