A medicine (tablet) commonly used for treatment of high Blood Pressure and heart problems has been put under the scanner by the Directorate of Drug Control, Government of Tamil Nadu.
Drug Control officials in various places, including Madurai, have been asked to collect samples of the tablet, ‘Cardace-5,' of a particular batch number from the stockists and send them for investigation to be done at the Directorate level, official sources said here.
“We have received instructions from the Directorate of Drug Control, Chennai, to send strips of ‘Cardace-5' tablets. The tablets were taken from the wholesale distributors and sent them for analysis at the Drug Testing Laboratory on Thursday,” an official told The Hindu here.
M. Bhaskaran, Director of Drug Control, confirmed that the particular tablet was under investigation due to certain doubts. “The problem is not with regard to expiry date but something else. The details will be revealed at a later stage when the investigation in to the suspicions is completed,” he said.
According to sources, the verification of the tablet stocks is being done by collecting the distribution details in each place, and already 20 strips from Madurai had been collected and sent for investigation following the Directorate's instructions. “The reasons for suspicion are still not known. Whether it is spurious or anything else, it is not informed to us. The samples of Cardace-5 we had collected are from a batch that was released three months back,” a drug inspector here said.
In the last few days, the Directorate of Drug Control had seized bottles of a cough syrup from various places and sent them to laboratory for analysis. “The mode of investigation for Benadryl cough syrup and Cardace-5 is completely different. The results will be knownsoon.”
