Identification Test for Tablets and Soft Capsules at Community Pharmacy

The Hikari Pharmacy worked together with the Department of Pharmacognosy of Tohoku Pharmaceutical University under an agreement on education and research between them to determine the properties of medicines in tablet and soft capsule form that a 74-year old female patient had taken and soon spat out.On the request of the patient,we checked her personal drug profile and found that she had been taking vitamin D3 soft capsules,calcium L-aspartate tablets and mecobalamin tablets.By thin layer chromatography,we identified vitamin D3 for the soft capsule but could not detect calcium L-aspartate in the tablet by this method.We finally identified the substance as L-aspartic acid using an amino acid analyzer.We informed the patient concerning the medicines directly in a written form handed to her at Hikari Pharmacy.It only took a short time for the identification tests and the patient was satisfied with the results.Performing identification tests for medicines is an important role of pharmacists in community pharmacies and thin layer chromatography is a good method for this purpose because it is simple,rapid and economical.