Perception of Quality about Local Manufacturing of Drugs in Pakistan and Its Qualitative Analysis

Abstract

The new drug development process is very expensive, so initially when a new drug comes in the market the innovator pharmaceutical company gets the sole rights to manufacture the drug for specific time. But later, other pharmaceutical companies get the rights to manufacture that drug. This increases the number of generic drugs available in the market and decreases the cost of therapy. But this decrease in cost of medicine does not mean poor quality. The objective of this research work was to identify that different generic products from local and multinational firms available in the market are comparable in quality to each other and innovator product and are pharmaceutically equivalent. A comparative qualitative research was carried out on innovator and genetic marketed formulations of atenolol tablets from multinational and local pharmaceutical industries. A total of five products were selected and different in-vitro tests were performed and compared against British Pharmacopoeia standards. All the marketed formulations of atenolol tablets were as per standards of British Pharmacopoeia and complied with the weight variation, dimension, hardness, friability, disintegration, dissolutions tests and assay. All the marketed formulations of atenolol tablets from innovator, multinational and local industry companies were pharmaceutical equivalent and can be used interchangeably.