Drug Adulteration and Its Types

Drug Adulteration and Types

• Adulteration is substituting a crude drug with similar-looking, inferior, useless, or harmful substances.
• The primary motive is financial gain (cheating).
• Adulteration can be deliberate (intentional) or accidental (unintentional).

Undeliberate Adulteration

• Faulty collection: Using inappropriate seasons or stages (e.g., collecting leaves during the wrong season) for plant collection can affect the drug's quality.
• Imperfect preparation: Incorrect harvesting methods or collection of the wrong parts of plants can lead to adulteration.
• Confusion of plant names: Similar-looking plants can be mistaken for one another during collection, resulting in adulteration.
• Incorrect storage/transportation: Poor preservation or handling during transportation or storage introduces impurities.

Deliberate Adulteration

• Deliberate adulteration is the intentional substitution of one substance for another.
• This can manifest in various ways, including:
  • Deterioration: Impairment of drug quality.
  • Admixture: Combining substances unknowingly or unintentionally.
  • Sophistication: Adding a substance to improve the appearance or perceived quality.
  • Substitution: Replacing the original drug with a different one.
  • Inferiority: Using a less potent or genuine substance with similar appearance.
  • Spoilage: Degradation of the drug due to microorganism activity.

Types of Adulterants

• Substandard Commercial Varieties: Using cheaper alternatives that resemble the genuine drug visually. Examples: substitutes for pepper, coffee, leaves, etc.
• Inferior Drugs: Using less potent substitutes.
• Artificially Manufactured Substances: Replacing the original drug with synthetic chemicals, often visually identical. Examples: using paraffin wax.
• Exhausted Drugs: Using a drug from which the active compounds have already been extracted.
• Vegetative Matter: Using parts of plants that don't contain the active compounds found in the main part.
• Non-Plant Materials: Using foreign materials to imitate the original drug.
• Synthetic Chemicals: Using chemically similar products, often cheaper, to mimic the original substance.

Methods of Drug Evaluation

• Evaluation of Drugs: Involves proper identification, determining quality, and checking purity.
• Identity: Correct identification of the source (plant or animal) of the drug.
• Quality: Determining the quantity of active ingredients.
• Purity: Assessing the presence of foreign materials or impurities.
• Evaluation Details: This includes analyzing biochemical variations, damage from storage, and presence of adulterated substances.

Morphological (Organoleptic) Methods

• Identifying a drug by using senses (smell, taste, color, texture, etc.).
• External features and morphology for identification.
• Specific examination based on parts of the plant. (e.g., stems, bark, roots).