Feds blast Rx taints

WASHINGTON — Thousands of contaminated or potentially tainted medications have made it to market over the past year after laboratories responsible for testing custommade pharmaceutical products failed to follow proper procedures, FDA records show.

The Food and Drug Administration uncovered the problems during a series of surprise inspections at dozens of specialty pharmacies over the past year, prompted by last fall’s deadly meningitis outbreak tied to tainted steroid injections made by one of the pharmacies, New England Compounding Center.

The FDA found unsanitary conditions and sloppy procedures at 60 specialty pharmacies.

Yet behind each one of these pharmacies, known as compounders, independent testing laboratories were affirming that the drugs were safe, sterile and mixed at the proper strength, FDA records show.

The FDA cited five labs for more than 70 safety problems, including one case in which the repeated appearance of bacteria in a socalled clean room where sterile drugs were being tested called into question the integrity of the testing procedures.

The five laboratories conduct testing for about 90 percent of the nation’s largescale specialty pharmacies, which massproduce custommixed drugs and other medical solutions for doctors, clinics and hospitals.

Dozens of types of medications, packaged in thousands of IV bags, syringes and vials, have been recalled as a result of FDA inspections at the compounding pharmacies and the laboratories they use.

One of the labs, Oklahomabased Analytical Research Laboratories, reported favorable test results for medications for the nowshuttered NECC, which produced the steroids that federal health officials say killed 64 people and sickened 686 other people last fall.

Another facility, DynaLabs in Missouri, tested and reported that a calcium gluconate solution, made by Texasbased Specialty Compounding, was safe and effective.

Federal authorities said they believe the solution supplied by Specialty Compounding was contaminated with bacteria.

Dozens of batches of that solution, commonly used to stabilize calcium levels in heart patients, were recalled by the pharmacy in August after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention linked it to two deaths and 13 illnesses at two Texas hospitals.

The FDA has not assigned blame for the contaminated medications exclusively to the labs.