@article{oai:kanazawa-u.repo.nii.ac.jp:00047306,
 author = {吉田, 直子 and 赤沢, 学 and 坪井, 宏仁 and 木村, 和子 and Khojah, Hani M. J. and Pallos, Henrik and Yoshida, Naoko and Akazawa, Manabu and Tsuboi, Hirohito and Kimura, Kazuko},
 issue = {7},
 journal = {Pharmacology and Pharmacy},
 month = {Oct},
 note = {Objectives: To classify community pharmacies (CPs) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in terms of the quality of medicines sold by them, using the lot quality assurance sampling (LQAS) technique with a predefined threshold. Methods: Riyadh CPs were divided into 2 categories (“lots” for the purpose of LQAS), i.e., chain and independent CPs. Upper and lower rate thresholds for CPs that sell low-quality medicines were predefined as 20% and 5%, respectively. Consumer and provider risks were predefined as 0.05 and 0.10, respectively. The calculated number of randomly selected CPs required in each lot was 36; then, sale of low-quality medicines in >3 CPs implies a prevalence of >20% of such CPs according to LQAS. A randomly selected brand of amoxicillin (selected as a quality indicator of medicines because it is both widely counterfeited and heat-sensitive) was purchased from each pharmacy by a “mystery shopper”, checked for authenticity, and analyzed for drug content and content uniformity using a validated HPLC method. Results: Substandard amoxicillin was purchased in 9 pharmacies (4 chains and 5 independent). Both lots were thus rejected as unacceptable, which may indicate that consumers in Riyadh are at risk of purchasing substandard medicines at CPs. Conclusions: The quality of medicines sold in CPs in Riyadh did not meet our acceptability criterion, and appropriate intervention by decision makers is recommended. LQAS proved to be a practical, economical, and statistically valid sampling method for surveying the quality of medicines. It should enable decision makers to allocate resources for improvement more efficiently., 医薬保健研究域薬学系},
 pages = {511--519},
 title = {The Quality of Medicines in Community Pharmacies in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: A Lot Quality Assurance Sampling (LQAS)-Based Survey},
 volume = {4},
 year = {2013}
}