ABSTRACT

There has been an increasing number of official and unofficial reports of sub-therapeutic responses by many commercially available medicines. This has raised questions in recent times about the quality of medications available to the general populace.

In this study, ascorbic acid (Vitamin C), which is one of the most widely prescribed vitamins in the treatment of common colds, aid wound healing process and help immune system resistance to infections as well as mopping up free radicals from the body, was subjected to quality assessment. BP specification for vitamin C is given as 95-107.5% of the labeled content using the BP titration method with 0.1 N Iodine solution. For the syrups, Brands A, B, C and J all met the BP specification while brands D, E, F, G, H and I did not meet the BP specification. For the tablets, Brands A and B met the recommended BP range while the other brands failed the test with Brand F coming close to the recommended range.

The mean force in kilopounds required for all the ten tablets of Samples A, B, D, F, G, H, I to lose its integrity, fell within the BP specified limit of 4-8 kilogram-force (kgf) or 4-8 kilopounds for tablet hardness, hence, these drugs passed the hardness test. However, Sample C (3.750 ± 0.171) and E (9.200 ± 0.281) showed a mean hardness value outside the acceptable limit hence it was considered to have failed the test

All the different tablets tested met the BP recommendation for disintegration time for uncoated tablets as they all disintegrated before 15 minutes, with Sample C (9.73 ± 0.16 minutes) showing the highest disintegration time and sample E (0.31 ± 0.00) showing the shortest disintegration time.