First Advisor

Corina E. Brown, Ph.D

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science

Document Type

Thesis

Date Created

12-1-2021

Department

College of Natural and Health Sciences, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Chemistry and Biochemistry Student Work

Abstract

The global phenomenon of drug counterfeiting is a threat to both patients and healthcare systems alike. Counterfeit drugs can build bacterial resistance to antibiotics, undermine public trust in prescribed medications, fail to alleviate sickness, or even hurt the patient. Annually, thousands of people die from ingesting fake drugs (Blackstone et al., 2014). In order to combat the global prevalence of drug counterfeiting, it is important to test suspect drugs for legitimacy and then report findings back to relevant authorities that can enforce drug quality standards (Lieberman, 2018). High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) is an analytical method that can determine the legitimacy of drug samples with excellent accuracy (Lieberman, 2018). Antibiotic drugs, such as amoxicillin, are ubiquitous and commonly prescribed for bacterial infections. Since these drugs are widely available globally, it can be assumed that they are commonly counterfeited. This project sought to determine whether selected samples of Amoxicillin are legitimate or counterfeit through testing with HPLC. Based on a retention time of around 3 minutes and peak characteristics consistent with chromatograms from a standard sample of amoxicillin, it was concluded that none of the supplied suspect samples of amoxicillin were counterfeit.

Rights Statement

Copyright is held by the author.

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