What is United States Pharmacopeia (USP)?
By on Feb 7th 2020
To explain this, you will need to understand what a pharmacopeia is.The literal meaning of the word is “drug making”. A pharmacopeia is an official collection of approved pharmaceutical standards that can be referenced by anyone who manufactures, distributes, or controls medicinal products. The main reason for a pharmacopeia is to set standards to ensure quality control in either a finished medicinal product or the ingredients needed to make that product.
A “Copeia” is a quarterly, peer-reviewed scientific journal. The US Pharmacopeia is a group of volunteer members that help create these standards. They come from academia, health care, governmental agencies, the veterinary sciences, the pharmaceutical, herbal medicines, and dietary supplements industries, and retail pharmacies. They currently offer more than 3,500 Reference Standards, including materials for drug substances, biologics, excipients, dietary supplements, food ingredients, impurities, degradation products, reagents, and performance verification standards
In 1975,
United States Pharmacopeia (USP) purchased National Formulary (NF) and is now
known as United States Pharmacopeia and National Formulary (USP-NF. It is the
only not- for- profit pharmacopeia in the world.
USP-NF establishes standards for medicines, food
ingredients, dietary supplement products, and ingredients. These standards are
very important as they are used by regulatory agencies and manufacturers to
help to ensure that these products are of the appropriate identity, as well as
strength, quality, purity, and consistency.
Sources:
https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=25605
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formulary_(pharmacy)
https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=25607
