I never said I couldn't read it, it's just.. amusing
Guys, how does this sound for an introduction??
These days, almost anything can be bought on the internet. With most products that wouldn’t matter, but even medicines are widely available now. This might pose a threat to the patients’ health. These medicines are often cheaper than regular ones, and that’s usually because they contain less of the real drug and more metabolites or other substances with unpleasant or even unknown side effects. Sometimes the drugs don’t even contain the substance they should.
Imipramine was, in the late 1950s, the first tricyclic antidepressant to be developed (by Ciba-Geigy). It was originally intended as a drug against psychotic disorders, but later found out to be a very useful anti-depressant. There are three main other tricyclic anti-depressants(TCA), Desipramine (A metabolite of Imipramine), Amytriptiline and Nortriptyline. Most medicines bought on the internet contain a certain concentration of these instead of Imipramine itself.
By analysis of the drugs bought on the internet can be determined how many other TCA’s are involved and at what concentration. This can be determined fairly easily using HPLC techniques. The peeks will show how many impurities are present in the sample, and compared to the pure substances each peek can be assigned a different TCA.