Indian pharmacopoeia

Briefly about Indian pharmacopoeia

The govt. of India published the Indian pharmacopoeia in 1946, which served as a supplement to British pharmacopoeia also prescribed to maintain the uniformity and chemical tests to be used to establish identity and purity. They constituted a permanent Indian pharmacopoeia committee in 1948.

The first edition of Indian pharmacopoeia was published in 1955 and a supplement was published in 1960.

Here the term “list” in the title was “Misleading” in that, it contains a list of drugs, medicinal values and standards of drugs.

The Indian pharmacopoeia revision and reconstituted under the chairmanship of Dr B. N Ghosh, professor of pharmacology, R. G Kar, medical college.

Dr B.N Gosh, Dr B. Mukerji Director, Central Drug Research Institute, Lucknow was appointed as chairman of the Indian pharmacopoeia committee.

The second edition was published in 1966 and a supplement was published in 1975, the reconstitution and revision by govt. of Indian ministry of health and family welfare, under the chairmanship of Dr Nityanand, Director, Central drug research institute, Lucknow.

The above committee prepared monographs, appendices and general topics, the third edition was published in 1985, in two volumes, in which volume 1 contains legal notices, acknowledgements, introductions, general topics and monographs from A to P letter.

Volume 2 contains monograph Q to Z, contents of appendices and index.

The third edition 1985

Fourth edition 1996

Fifth edition 2007

Sixth edition 2010

Seventh edition 2014

Eighth edition 2018

Also read: Pharmaceutical Associations in India

List out of various pharmacopoeia

Indian pharmacopeia (IP)

British pharmacopoeia (B.P)

United States of pharmacopoeia (U.S.P)

European pharmacopoeia

Indian pharmaceutical codex (I.P.C)

Japanese pharmacopoeia

British pharmaceutical codex

National formulary of India (NFI)

National formulary (N.F)

Salient features of Indian pharmacopoeia

The salient feature of the eighth edition are:

  1. Hard gelatin capsule shell etc has been revised.
  2. general chemical identification tests and TLC (thin layer chromatography) for the identification of an article have been almost eliminated. Infrared spectra for basis identification have been continued, along with UV spectrophotometer and HPLC used.
  3. Some of the tests like the rate of drug release and assay methods are upgraded by chromatography techniques.
  4. pyrogen tests are replaced with bacterial endotoxin tests (BET) in parental preparations.
  5. For easy-to-access pharmacopoeia, the index has been incorporated in volume 1 along with the already existing one in volume 4 of I.P.
  6. General chapters on volumetric glassware, conductivity, dissolution test, disintegration test and dimensions.
  7. 53 new fixed-dose combination (FDC) monographs have been included, out of which 25 FDC monographs are not available in any pharmacopoeia.

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