Romanian Society of Pharmaceutical Sciences
 

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COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS BY HPLC-UV AND CAPILLARY ELECTROPHORESIS OF DIETARY SUPPLEMENTS FOR WEIGHT LOSS

AMELIA TERO-VESCAN1, CAMIL-EUGEN VARI2*, SILVIA IMRE3, BIANCA-EUGENIA ŐSZ2, CRISTINA FILIP1, GABRIEL HANCU4

University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Faculty of Pharmacy, 38 Gheorghe Marinescu Street, Târgu Mureș, 540139, Romania
1 .Biochemistry and Chemistry of Environmental Factors Department
2 .Farmacology and Clinical Pharmacy Department
3 .Organic Chemistry Department
4 .Pharmaceutical Chemistry Department

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The legislation for dietary supplements (DS) is extremely permissive although some of these supplements may contain pharmacologically active, alleged vegetal compounds such as caffeine (CF), yohimbine (Y) or ephedrine (EPH), and the lack of strict control raises the question of contamination with prohibited substances in the European Union. This paper proposes a comparative analysis of weight loss DS by two separation techniques, capillary electrophoresis and high performance liquid chromatography with UV detection. The results obtained by the two methods show a higher dose of CF than stated on the label, as these DS contain CF pure substance and CF-containing extracts (matrix), while for Y the determined content is lower than the amount specified on the label. The two methods give comparable results in the analysis of DS, any statistically significant differences can be related to the uniformity of the analysed samples.