Quality and safety assessment of sexual performance enhancement herbal medicines

Abstract

The objectives of this study are to assess the quality and safety of illegal sexual performance enhancement products and to develop analytical methods to enhance the adulterant testing capability in the national quality control laboratory. The research project is a collaboration project between Health Sciences Authority (HSA), Singapore and the Department of Pharmacy, National University of Singapore.

The work consists of the following 3 parts :

(1) quality and safety assessment of 247 illegal sexual performance enhancement herbal health products (2) development of a liquid chromatography-hybrid tandem mass spectrometry method (LC-Hybrid Tandem MS) for screening phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitors and their 22 analogues in herbal products, and (3) isolation and structural elucidation of an unknown adulterant from a health supplement used for female sexual performance enhancement, using liquid chromatography-diode array detection (LC-DAD), liquid chromatography-linear ion trap fourier transform mass spectrometry (LC-LTQ FTMS), nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) and Infrared spectroscopy (IR).

The work presented in this thesis is useful to consumers, regulators, healthcare professionals and the industry players. The method developed and validated has helped to enhance the adulterant testing capability of the national regulatory control laboratory in screening the phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitors, their analogues and other unknown adulterants found in health products claimed for sexual performance enhancement.