New Test for Fake Tamiflu

posted: Tuesday, April 29, 2008 | Categories: Tamiflu

Most of us are aware of huge number of fake goods that are being produced in the Far East. Handbags, clothes, and electronic goods…the list goes on. Go to any street corner or market in a large city and you will be able to pick up the latest designer bag or sunglasses, which, to the untrained eye, are almost identical to the real thing.

Recently this trend for counterfeit goods has moved into far more dangerous territory- prescription drugs. Buying a fake handbag will, perhaps, cause a loss of profit to the manufacturers of the real things but buying fake drugs could cause real damage to your body.

Every day of the year hundreds of millions of spam emails arrive in the in-boxes of practically every computer around the world advertising unlicensed anti-impotence drugs. These emails contain links to the thousands web of sites selling untested and unlicensed products which are, at best, not as effective as the real thing and at worst contain ingredients which can be dangerous to your health

Whilst it might have seemed that the counterfeiters were concerned predominantly with anti-impotence medication, however, now it seems that they have many other drugs on the agenda: the market for counterfeit drugs is expanding at an alarming rate into ‘cancer treatment’ drugs and even into Tamiflu. It might be hard to fathom that people would stoop so low as to sell fake influenza medication. The production of Tamiflu, however, is big business.

The good news is that scientists in Georgia in the United States have come up with a simple test, which can quickly determine the authenticity of Tamiflu. The whole process takes one minute, twenty times faster than the previously available test. The test uses a process called Desorption Electrospray Ionisation Mass Spectrometry or DESI-MS and is able to determine whether the purported Tamiflu medication is genuine or counterfeit.

Dr. Facundo Fernandez, of the Georgia Institute of Technology said that people should be extremely wary of websites selling very cheap Tamiflu, as it is unlikely to be real. The Online Clinic is one of the few websites in the UK that prescribes genuine Tamiflu following an online consultation. Always check that your medication is coming from a registered pharmacy. If the price looks too good to be true then it probably is!

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