Posted by King Vultan on June 29, 2004, at 11:54:24
In reply to is there truly a diffrence between Brand Generic, posted by 1980Monroe on June 28, 2004, at 21:55:03
It's not just the drug but the inert ingredients that can have a bearing on the performance of the drug. My pdoc says that when Tofranil (imipramine) went generic years ago, some patients would suddenly report they weren't doing as well. When asked if the pills looked the same, and with the reply "No, they don't", it was easy enough with imipramine to check the blood plasma level of the drug. When they did so with these patients, it was obvious that the blood plasma level of the imipramine had fallen out of the therapeutic range.
The reason for this was that the generic drug was being produced by a different company using different excipients, or inert ingredients, which affect the absorbtion characteristics of the drug. This was happening even though the drug itself was identical and assayed to the correct number of mg per tablet. Recently, this phenomenon has occurred with the MAOI Nardil, where Pfizer has made substantial changes to the inert ingredients in the pills and also moved the manufacturing operation to France. This is resulting in many people not being able to absorb the drug as well as they used to, with an increase in depression and/or anxiety, sometimes accompanied with withdrawal type symptoms. Increases in dosage have been necessary in many cases to compensate for the formulation change, but unfortunately, these are proving futile for some individuals.
Todd
poster:King Vultan
thread:361480
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20040627/msgs/361656.html