Nitrosamine contamination withdrawals spread to new drugs

Drugmakers and regulators around the world are mobilising in response to new discoveries of products containing probable carcinogen N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA). In particular the European Medicines Agency (EMA) now says that companies should check all their drugs for this and other nitrosamines.

Mona Abdel-Tawab, deputy scientific manager of the Central Laboratory of German Pharmacists welcomes the decision. ‘It’s really high time to initiate such a review on the NDMA content in all drugs,’ she tells Chemistry World. ‘The probability is very high that we are dealing here with a much more general problem than simply the contamination of individual drugs or compounds.’