Wow, imagine this getting out in circulation. Clinical studies could never be the same if participants were now able to identify the placebos! Perhaps we would have better placebos! (grin). BD
The fight against fake medicines could soon be aided by a small, portable device that quickly measures the hardness of a tablet, revealing whether it is counterfeit, according to research presented at the British Pharmaceutical Conference (BPC) in Manchester. The study tested a series of dummy paracetamol tablets made with varying degrees of real medicine, versus lactose (an ingredient used by counterfeiters to replace the active drug). Tests showed that the fake tablets were harder than the tablet with the correct amount of paracetamol, and were more difficult to crush. Counterfeit medicines often look identical to the genuine product, but can contain substances like flour or cement and very little active ingredient - which can have a devastating impact on the people who take them.
Simple Test To Detect Fake Medicines
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It seems like all the counterfeiters have to do is add more hardening agents to their fake medications. Perhaps they should have kept this litle fact a secret until they arrested some of the fake manufacturers
ReplyDeleteThis could be breaking news someday, device found on eBay identified the fake pills used in clinical trials.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments here, and yes the folks should be caught by all means and now that the initial code and algorithms are working on detecting the the fakes, no doubt it will be expanded to search other properties as well as the hardness of the tablets. Yes I was being a bit sarcastic with my comments on the clinical trials here, but knowing how some of the software processes work, something like this could in time end up being used in that fashion.
ReplyDeleteSoftware is doing some pretty amazing things today and once the base is created, we have updates of sorts! The process will get smarter as developed and thus have the potential to creep in to other areas and by today's standards it doesn't take long.