Rapid Smartphone-based Image Reading for Assessing Quality of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients of Commonly Prescribed Drugs-Lusaka Zambia

Third world countries suffer from supply of substandard therapeutic drugs and due to lack of robust quality testing facilities, many of these drugs find themselves in the dispensaries and various outlets for over the counter purchase. In order to ensure quality, simple yet informative tests are available and one of them is high performance thin layer chromatography. High Performance Thin Layer Chromatography (HPTLC) coupled with image acquisition by TLC software application on a smart phone and analysis by freeware Digitally enhanced Thin Layer Chromatography (DeTLC) respectively was performed using the minilab protocols for assessing quality of drugs dispensed at the University of Zambia clinic as well as drugs randomly bought from different pharmacies around Lusaka, Zambia. The quality of drugs was assessed by comparing retardation factors with standards and approximate percent active ingredient amounts were compared using the maximal K intensities derived by the DeTLC software for image analysis. Normalizing the spots to the 100% spot, mean values with respective standard deviations were : atenelol (85.6±0.5), ciprofloxacin (95.6±1.1), ketoconazole (78.2±1.1), mebendazole (95.5±1.1), nevirapine (96.7±1.1), penicillin v (100.5±1.1), quinine (92.9±1.1), rifampicin (99.3±0.7) and isoniazid (72.0±4.1). All the drugs tested were within the acceptable range of concentrations of the active pharmaceutical ingredient ( 0 to 5.3% Rf error). Thus, the simple robust HPTLC method coupled with simple to use digital imaging software provides a quick means to check on quality of the drugs dispensed.