Beyond the difficulty of obtaining important medications to begin with, patients in the developing world face an additional challenge in determining which medications are legitimate. A new test developed by researchers from the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., and Hamline University in St. Paul, Minn., does just that for crucial antibiotics like ciprofloxacin and ceftriaxone.
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"People who don't have access to the best-quality medicines also don't have as many resources to buy the analytical instrumentation to detect the quality problems," Marya Lieberman, PhD, a researcher involved with the development of the test, said in a statement. "Instead of a $30,000 instrument, we've developed a $1 paper card. We designed the card so it would be as easy and [as] inexpensive to use as possible."
The test includes 12 "lanes," or divided segments, each of which contains a different reactive agent that can detect degradation or commonly used fillers in drugs. If a drug begins to degrade due to conditions such as storage temperature, or if a medication has been falsified, the test should detect it. Then users can compare the color patterns from the paper with sample patterns with the naked eye or a phone-based app.
The team from Hamline University is also developing an X-ray based test that would scan pills for substances used to falsely color them.
More articles on antibiotics:
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How temporal predictive analytics can improve antibiotic prescription, sepsis care