Abstract

The use of glucocorticosteroids is quite prevalent in India as magic drugs for treating various ailments. Athlete may opt for the use of herbal drugs over the allopathic drugs to recover from an injured muscle considering them to be safe. But the manufactures of herbal drugs sometimes spike their preparations with glucocorticosteroids for fast recovery of patients which may lead to a positive dope test. The aim of this study was to screen unlabeled drug preparations for the contamination of banned glucocorticosteroids obtained from a hospital wherein, the patients were using them for cure of diseases like asthma, arthritis, eczema etc. Sixty herbal drug preparations (twenty seven tablets and thirty three capsules) were obtained from Department of Pharmacology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, India. These drugs were found to be negative by a qualitative chemical test method employed in AIIMS. These drugs were sent to our laboratory wherein, liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) was used for testing of sixteen banned corticosteroids. The suspicious preparations were further confirmed for the presence of specific corticosteroid. Aus dem Text