Active ingredient

An active ingredient, also active pharmaceutical ingredient (or API), is the substance in drugthat is pharmaceutically active.

A capsule, tablet, syrup, intravenousfluid, or any other formulation of a drug is traditionally composed of two things: The API, which is the drug itself; and an excipient, which is the substance of the tablet, or the liquid the API is suspended in, or other material that is pharmaceutically inert.

See also: counterfeit drug.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active+ingredient Wikipedia article Active ingredient.