Having an erectile dysfunction and too embarrassed to consult a doctor? You may find buying Viagra online an easy option but those may be fake.
To deal with the problem of counterfeit drugs, most of which are erectile dysfunction drugs like Viagra (Sildenafil citrate), researchers have now developed an efficient technique that can detect fake drugs in just 10 minutes.
"Our analysis takes 10 minutes whereas previously, it took up to 50," said Philippe Lebel of University of Montreal in Canada.
"In addition, our method identifies compounds that were not identified before, even in low concentrations," Lebel noted.
Rather, "using a scanning technique, it also detects non-targeted compounds, some of them new synthetic analogs of the active ingredient", Alexandra Furtos from University of Montreal said.
This is the originality of the method, Furtos emphasised.
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Using a highly-specialised equipment, researchers developed an analytical method to detect the 80 substances that may be substituted for the active ingredients in the three erectile dysfunction drugs on the market: Viagra, Cialis and Levitra.
Thirty pharmaceutical and natural products, some of which were seized at the Canadian border, were then analysed to test and prove the potential of the new method.
The findings appeared in the Journal of Chromatography.