Americans are being warned about the dangers of buying prescription drugs over the Internet.
The government watchdog the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has alerted consumers after 24 related Web sites were found to be possibly distributing counterfeit medications.
The FDA has on three occasions recently found two sites advertising a fake version of the weight-loss drug Xenical in 120 mg capsules, where the weight-loss drug's active ingredient, orlistat, was absent from the pills.
Xenical is a prescription drug approved by the FDA drug to help obese individuals lose weight.
The drug manufacturer Roche found after testing some of the counterfeit medications, that they contained sibutramine, the active ingredient in Meridia, another weight-loss drug made by Abbott; doses and drug interaction for Meridia differs from Xenical.
Sibutramine is taken once daily while Xenical is taken three times a day.
Other samples merely contained talcum powder and starch.
The pills were purchased on two web sites, brandpills.com and pillspharm.com, part of 24 web sites that appear on the pharmacycall365.com.
Four of these web sites have been identified by WHO's Office of Criminal Investigations in the past for selling fake Cialis and Tamiflu.
The FDA cautions consumers to be wary of online drug deals that are too good to be true and to be concerned if there is no way to contact the web site pharmacy by phone, if prices are dramatically lower than the competition, or if no prescription from your doctor is required.
According to Roche, these two samples displayed a valid Roche lot number of B2306 and were labeled with an expiration date of April 2007.
The correct expiration date for this lot number is actually March 2005.
Pictures of the counterfeit Xenical capsules provided by Roche can be viewed at http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/news/photos/xenical.html.
According to the FDA it appears that these Web sites are operated from outside of the United States.
Consumers are urged to review the FDA Web page at www.fda.gov/buyonline/ for additional information prior to making purchases of prescription drugs over the Internet.