Detection of Falsified Antimalarial Sulfadoxine-Pyrimethamine and Dihydroartemisinin-Piperaquine Drugs Using a Low-Cost Handheld Near-Infrared Spectrometer : Hindawi Journal of Analytical Methods in Chemistry Volume 2022

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Résumé

Falsifed drugs are of serious concern to public health worldwide, particularly for developing countries where quality control of
drugs is inefficient. In law enforcement against such fake medicines, there is a need to develop reliable, fast, and inexpensive
screening methods. In this work, the ability of an innovative low-cost handheld near-infrared spectrometer to identify falsifications among two antimalarial fixed dose combination tablets, dihydroartemisinin/piperaquine and sulfadoxine/pyrimethamine, has been investigated. Analyzed samples were collected in Burkina Faso mainly in rural transborder areas that could be
infiltrated by illicit drugs. A principal component analysis was applied on the acquired near-infrared spectra to identify trends,
similarities, and differences between collected samples. This allowed to detect some samples of dihydroartemisinin/piperaquine
and sulfadoxine/pyrimethamine which seemed to be falsifed. these suspicious samples were semiquantitatively analyzed by thinlayer chromatography using Minalab® kits. Obtained results allowed to confirm the falsifications since the suspected samples did
not contain any of the expected active pharmaceutical ingredients. The capacity of the low-cost near-infrared device to identify
specifically a brand name of dihydroartemisinin/piperaquine or sulfadoxine/pyrimethamine has been also studied using soft
independent modelling of class analogy (SIMCA) in the classical and data driven versions. The built models allowed a clear brand
identification with 100% of both sensitivity and specificity in the studied cases. All these results demonstrate the potential of these
low-cost near-infrared spectrometers to be used as first line screening tools, particularly in resource limited laboratories, for the
detection of falsified antimalarial drugs.

Mots-clés

falsified- anti-malaria