A survey on illegal and counterfeit medicines for the treatment of erectile dysfunctions in Italy.

Introduction: In developed countries the phenomenon of pharmaceutical counterfeiting is steadily increasing through the illegal and the Internet market. Medicines for the treatment of erectile dysfunctions containing phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitors (PDE5) are especially prone to falsification.

Aims: To obtain evidence of the health risks for patients taking these products and to provide useful information to general practitioners and specialists in sexual medicine.

Counterfeit drugs detection by measurement of tablets and secondary packaging colour.

The growth of pharmaceutical counterfeiting is a major public health problem. This growth is resulting in a proportional increase in the number of samples that medicines control laboratories have to test. Thus the need for simple and affordable preliminary screening methods to be used by inspectors to decide in the field whether to collect a sample for further laboratory analysis or not.