ver 50 drugs including popular medications such as Paracetamol tablets IP 500mg, anti-diabetic drug Glimepiride, vitamin C softgels, Vitamin C and D3 tablets Shelcal, and high BP medicine Telmisartan, among others have been found to be of “Not of Standard Quality (NSQ) Alert” as per the Central Drugs Standards Control Organization (CDSCO), the country’s top drug regulator.

The alert was issued after random monthly sampling conducted by state drug officers. The regulator releases the list of “not of standard quality” drugs every month.

The batches of medicines flagged by the CDSCO in its drug alert for August are of companies such as Alkem Laboratories, Hindustan Antibiotics Limited, Hetero Labs Limited, Karnataka Antibiotics and Pharmaceuticals Ltd, Nestor Pharmaceuticals Ltd, Priya Pharmaceuticals and Scott-Edil Pharmacia Ltd, according to a news agency. The CDSCO’s drug alert for August also included samples from batches of medications such as  D3 tablets and Ciprofloxacin tablets.

Antibiotics such as Amoxicillin And Potassium Clavulanate tablets have also been categorised as not of “not of standard quality”.

While batches of some drugs failed the ‘dissolution test’ as per Indian Pharmacopoeia (IP) and failed the ‘Assay’ and ‘water’ test as per IP, some were identified as spurious or having uniformity of volume issues. These drugs are produced by several pharmaceutical companies.

According to the CDSCO, the drugs licensing authorities of Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Manipur, Rajasthan, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Odisha, Punjab, Sikkim and Tamil Nadu, have not submitted any data regarding the Not of Standard Quality (NSQ) Alert for August 2024.

In August, the top drug regulator had banned over 156 fixed-dose drug combinations in the Indian market due to potential risks to humans. These included popular fever drugs, painkillers, and allergy tablets.

Earlier in February, the DCGI Rajeev Raghuvanshi instructed states/UTs to keep a strong vigilance and surveillance on the quality of drugs available in the market by doing random sampling of the medicines.