A cousin who has adopted some of my thinking on geroprotection forwarded an article on counterfeit pharma from Mexico and India. Mexico was said to have the greatest counterfeiting operation but India was in second place. All of us no doubt see these articles frequently.
Recently, we had a thorough discussion on rapamycin brands but I wonder if we can crowdsource recent quality metrics on other India-supplied gero stack drugs, either through recent blood tests. or other observations or metrics.
Later this month, I will have a comprehensive blood test and will be able to report back on the impact of a few of common drugs including telmisartan, empagliflozin, Bempedoic acid, ezetimibe, BA+EZ, and acarbose in the brands I am taking.
India is where the world’s generic drugs are produced.
I understand this and have read those threads. As you will recall with respect to rapamycin, there are meaningful differences between the major India brands, not with respect to the presence of sirolimus, but withe respect to how the raw material – most of which traces back to a single fermenting company – but to the processing of the raw material to facilitate adsorption. I hope to be wrong but I think it is reasonable to consider that such differences may also apply to other common pharmaceuticals, including publicly traded brands.
I’m not sure I understand your question but the process by which raw fermented sirolimus is made assimilable is expensive and requires specialized equipment which is reflected in the lab’s certifications. I and others documented that some brands were simply pressing raw rapa into tablets, thereby yielding extremely low assimilation. You received the full 1 mg or 5 mg but most people would assimilate a small fraction of the amount that they would assimilate with a brand that did the correct processing.
Most of the APIs (ie, the raw sirolimus powder) likely originates in China, for all the rapamycin pharma companies in India. That was s the case for most drugs.