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Preservatives in liquid pharmaceutical preparations
Author(s) -
Boukarim Chawki,
Abou Jaoude Sarah,
Bahnam Rita,
Barada Roula,
Kyriacos Soula
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
drug testing and analysis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.065
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1942-7611
pISSN - 1942-7603
DOI - 10.1002/dta.28
Subject(s) - pharmaceutical sciences , library science , medicine , computer science , pharmacology
Sodium benzoate, potassium sorbate, and methyl hydroxybenzoate are com- monly used as preservatives in liquid pharmaceutical preparations. The pur- pose of this study is to determine the amount of the aforementioned preserva- tives in pharmaceutical products, as some recent studies have reported seri- ous side effects associated with the ingestion of these substances. The con- tent of 37 liquid pharmaceutical prod- ucts were simultaneously determined by high performance liquid chromatogra- phy. Preparations were analyzed in trip- licate for their preservative content using a sensitive and reproducible HPLC method modified in our laborato- ry. Preservative levels were found to fall outside the typical allowed concentra- tion range for 70% of the samples, with some exhibiting significantly higher con- centrations. The reason behind such findings is unclear, and could be due to poor quality control or to intentionally extend the shelf-life of the products. These findings highlight issues related to quality control and to patient's safety. Consequences on patient health need to be evaluated, especially since most liq-