Doctors have warned against “herbal remedies" for Impotence treatment sold over-the-counter in Hong Kong after most of them were found to include untested variants of well-known anti-impotence drugs.

These variants are copies of controlled drugs but they are slightly modified in their chemical formation to get away with patent and other drug-related laws.

Cranked out unlawfully, these chemicals are not tested for their effectiveness or safety and can have impulsive, adverse effects. They are added implicit into "health products," which do not come under stringent tests in most countries.Writing in the latest issue of the Hong Kong Medical Journal, the scientists said they studied 26 anti-impotence products sold in convenience stores and pharmacies.

Although their packaging declared that they limited only "herbal ingredients," variants of sildenafil and vardenafil were found in 14 of them. Sildenafil was found in one product.Sildenafil and vardenafil are generic names for their better known trade labels Viagra and Levitra, respectively, and they are prescribed drugs in Hong Kong.

"Without going through the rigorous drug testing procedure, the bad effects of these chemicals remain largely unidentified and irregular," they warned, as they called for urgent and more effective observation and control.” The medical profession and the public should be alerted to this under-recognized threat."

"Unlike the parent pharmaceutical, no formal studies have been performed to assure the safety and efficacy of these analogues," the researchers wrote.” Evidently, the adverse effects of drug analogues are highly irregular and the utilization of such products is dangerous."

Analogues have also been found in so called "natural" or "herbal" slimming products in Hong Kong and at least one woman has died of a cardiac arrest after consuming them.

Source: Reuters    

A man described as the UK linchpin of a global conspiracy to sell fake medicines over the internet was yesterday sentenced to four and a half years in prison following what police described as the biggest counterfeit drugs bust in British history.

Ashish Halai, 33, masterminded the multimillion-pound movement of fake Viagra and other lucrative drugs from factories in China, India and Pakistan into the UK and then on to the Bahamas and the US.Three other men were also convicted of conspiracy charges; Gary Haywood, 58, Halai's brother-in-law Ashwin Patel, 24, and Pakistan-based Zahid Mirza, 45, are yet to be sentenced. Four others face a retrial after the jury failed to agree verdicts.

Sentencing Halai at the end of a nine-month trial at Kingston crown court, Judge Nicholas Price told him: "I'm satisfied that greed is the overriding motivation for such offences. I have absolutely no doubt that large profits were made...You are undoubtedly a highly intelligent man. I accept that you have business acumen which should have been better employed in legitimate enterprise." It was a chance find that led to the unravelling of a massive global prescription drug fraud in which UK criminals were key players. Customs staff at Stansted airport opened a package containing plastic tubs of fish protein and dog protein. Inside were 12,000 little blue diamond-shaped pills.

It was counterfeit Viagra, destined for thousands of young men seeking pleasure and older men seeking help for impotence not only in the UK but in other countries around the world. The tablets, repackaged to look like the original, would be sent out to customers who had ordered Viagra through internet websites, either because they were too embarrassed to see a GP or because they did not qualify for a prescription. What few realise is that most lifestyle drugs sold on the internet are fake.

Source : The Guardian