Abstract:

50 different brands of artemether/lumefantrine was used for this study. TLC and HPLC were used to assess the quality of these drugs. With the physical test, all products passed the uniformity of weight and disintegration time test, but one tablet BD 03 failed the friability test. From the results of TLC and HPLC analysis, artemether/lumefratine content were very close to the labelled amount. The exceptions are 7 (28.0%) samples out of 25 samples analyzed by HPLC failed; BD 03 AL 82.11 ± 0.27/81.48 ± 0.20%, AP 08 AL 87.45 ± 0.17/88.13 ± 0.68%, LP 09 AL 74.51 ± 2.09/89.68 ± 0.28%, LP 10 AL 86.38 ± 0.27/99.17 ± 0.07%, DGAH 17 AL 76.71 ± 0.42/86.94 ± 18.46%, BDSH 33 AL 101.77 ± 1.58/61.36 ± 0.17% and ISR 35 AL 173.19 ± 1.10/12.60 ± 0.03%. The artemether content in the tablets samples varied from 74.0 to 173.0%, while lumefantrine content varied from 13.0 to 110.0%, with ISR 35 showing the highest/lowest content of artemether/lumefantrine of AL 173.19 ± 1.10/12.60 ± 0.03%. LP 09 and LP 10 only failed the artemether test showing low content of 74 and 86% respectively, while containing an acceptable range of the lumefantrine component of 90 and 99% respectively. On the other hand, BDSH 33