Chemical fingerprinting of silicone-based breast implants.

With millions of women worldwide carrying them, silicone-based breast implants represent a large market. Even though silicone breast implants already have a history of use of more than 50 years, the discussion on their safety has not yet come to an end. To improve safety assessment, regulatory authorities should have the availability of a set of tests to be able to determine parameters of implant identity and quality.

Active pharmaceutical ingredients detected in herbal food supplements for weight loss sampled on the Dutch market.

Herbal food supplements claiming to reduce weight may contain active pharmacological ingredients (APIs) that can be used for the treatment of overweight and obesity. The aim of this study was to determine whether herbal food supplements for weight loss on the Dutch market contain APIs with weight loss properties. Herbal food supplements intended for weight loss (n = 50) were sampled from August 2004 to May 2013.

A cocktail of synthetic stimulants found in a dietary supplement associated with serious adverse events.

Food supplements are regularly found to contain pharmacologically active substances. Recently, the food supplement Dexaprine was removed from the Dutch market because it was associated with severe adverse events. Reports to the Dutch Poisons Information Center (DPIC) showed that ingestion of as little as half a tablet caused several cases of nausea, agitation, tachycardia, and palpitations and even one case of cardiac arrest.

Capsule shells adulterated with tadalafil.

Following a health complaint a food supplement was brought in for analysis on the suspicion of being adulterated with a synthetic drug substance. When the capsule content did not show evidence of adulteration, the capsule shell was investigated. Using HPLC-DAD and HPLC-MS the capsule shell was found to contain 2.

Assessment of health claims, content, and safety of herbal supplements containing Ginkgo biloba.

Background: European Regulation 1924/2006 states that all health claims made on foods need to be substantiated scientifically.

Objective: To apply the PASSCLAIM criteria for the scientific substantiation of health claims on foods to herbal supplements containing Ginkgo biloba. Evaluation of three selected claimed health effects for G.

Designer drugs in herbal aphrodisiacs.

In the presented case three herbal aphrodisiacs (Libidfit, Satibo and Viamax) were investigated for the presence of regular pharmaceuticals against erectile dysfunction. However, high-performance liquid chromatography with diode array detection and mass spectrometry (HPLC-DAD-MS) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) analyses revealed the presence of ingredients, having a molecular structure strongly resembling those of sildenafil (Viagra) and vardenafil (Levitra). The health risk posed by these analogous substances is high because they were found to be potent phosphodiesterase 5 (PDE5) inhibitors used in pharmacologically relevant quantities having no known safety profile.

Detection of counterfeit Viagra with Raman spectroscopy.

During the last few years, counterfeiters have become increasingly sophisticated by falsifying drugs and making them look identical to genuine tablets. In this paper, Raman spectroscopy is proposed as a fast and reliable method for the detection of counterfeit Viagra tablets. This technique can easily differentiate genuine from counterfeit tablets without the need of sample preparation.