Potency and Dissolution Property of Several Brands of Commercial Iron Capsules Marketed in Bangladesh

The aim of this study was to assess the quality of some iron capsules locally marketed in Bangladesh, in terms of potency (drug content) and dissolution. Two different categories of combined ferrous iron-folic acid containing oral capsules were collected randomly from different medicine shops of Dhaka city. One category contained iron as ferrous sulfate salt and the other category contained iron as carbonyl iron. Collected nine different brands of dried ferrous sulfate (DFS) containing capsules were coded as DFS-01 to DFS-09, while carbonyl iron (CI) containing capsules (10 different brands) were coded as CI-01 to CI-10. DFS and CI capsules were analyzed by using UV-VIS spectrophotometer and atomic absorption spectrophotometer (AAS) respectively. Potency of all the DFS capsules complied with British Pharmacopoeial (BP) specification, whereas only three of the ten brands of CI capsules (CI-01, CI-02 and CI-10) showed satisfactory amount of carbonyl iron per capsule amounting to 49.9mg (99.8%), 50.2mg (100.4%) and 50.06mg (100.1%) respectively. Dissolution data of half of the carbonyl iron capsules (viz CI-03, CI-05, CI-07, CI-08 and CI-10) did not meet pharmacopoeial specification i.e., their Q value (percent released of the labeled amount of the drug) was below the acceptance limit ( 75%) of USP. To conclude, only the ferrous sulfate capsules were of good quality in terms of potency but most of the capsules of carbonyl iron form showed unsatisfactory assay and dissolution property.