The Altered Efficacy of Traditional Antidiabetic Formulations in Chittagong Division: Metformin Admixing doi.org/10.26538/tjnpr/v5i3.7

Abstract

Traditional medicine describes the treatment of diseases using a traditional medicinal practitioner’s plant-based prescriptions. Although most people in developing countries continue to rely on traditional medicinal practices, many practitioners add modern active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) to their formulations. The aim of this study was to investigate the inclusion of metformin, an antidiabetic API, in traditional formulations, which represents a departure from standard practice. Samples were collected based on reports obtained from a short survey of practitioners in Chittagong City (Samples A, B, C, E, and F) and Rangamati District (Samples D, H, I, and J). The presence of metformin in the collected traditional formulations was confirmed using reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) analysis comparing against a metformin standard. The HPLC chromatograms indicated the adulteration of the traditional medicine Samples D, E, I, and J with metformin, whereas the Samples A, B, C, F, and H were devoid of metformin admixture. The Samples D, E, I, and J contained 0.2169 ± 0.0018 ppm, 1.0714 ± 0.01 ppm, 2.8311 ± 0.01 ppm, and 0.0309 ± 0.003 ppm metformin, respectively. Inappropriate doses of metformin added to traditional medicines have been reported to result in detrimental health effects for patients. These results demonstrated the intentional use of metformin in traditional antidiabetic drugs by traditional practitioners to increase their credibility, which could represent a risk to the safety of patients who depend on traditional medicine.