BOSTON, Mass. — Drugs produced by the company blamed for a nationwide fungal meningitis outbreak contained ingredients that tested up to 5,019% stronger than they were supposed to while other products contained not even a trace of a mandated ingredient.

That was the testimony yesterday by Tommy Means, the quality control manager for Analytic Research Laboratories (ARL), in the murder trial of Barry Cadden, the one-time president of the drug company, the New England Compounding Center.

Mr. Means told jurors that Oklahoma-based ARL, which had been doing testing for NECC for more than a decade, was asked by an investigator for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to produce records of its NECC tests during the investigation of the outbreak.

Mr. Cadden is on trial on charges of racketeering and 25 counts of second degree murder. He was one of 14 owners and employees of the now defunct NECC blamed for the outbreak, which first surfaced in Tennessee. NECC steroids contaminated with fungus sickened 778 patients, killing 76 of them.

Under questioning by Assistant U.S. Attorney Amanda Strachan, Mr. Means went through a list of aberrant test results, including an antibiotic solution that ARL found contained 5,019% of the level of bacitracin that was prescribed and a syringe of mannitol that contained 169.1% of the prescribed dose.

While Mr. Means called that drug "superpotent," he cited other tests with the opposite results.

• A drug that was supposed to contain famotidine and dexamethasone contained not a trace of famotidine.
• A drug that was supposed to contain clindamycin and gentamicin had subpotent amounts of both ingredients.
• An ophthalmic compound lacked the required dose of lidocaine.

Walter F. Roche, Jr.

Mr. Roche, a former reporter for the Baltimore Sun and Nashville Tennessean, is covering the NECC trial in Boston for Outpatient Surgery.