Posted by Tomatheus on July 11, 2012, at 13:50:00
In reply to Re: Why does Nardil cause urinary retention? » gilmourr, posted by viper1431 on July 11, 2012, at 6:14:37
> The nardil sold here in Australia actually contains instructions on the bottle to always store it in the fridge.
Yes, the labeling information for the U.K. Nardil (http://www.medicines.org.uk/emc/medicine/18541/SPC/Nardil+tablets/) says something similar. What I'm not sure of is whether or not refrigerating Nardil would prevent it from being exposed to too much humidity. It's my understanding that some refrigerators have a high-humidity drawer and a low-humidity drawer, but I'm not sure what the relative humidity in the main area of an average refrigerator is.
To Gilmourr: It might be worth trying to refrigerate your Nardil, although I think it would be interesting to hear what a pharmacist would have to say about this matter (keep in mind that the pill bottles that store Nardil in pharmacies do have something inside of them to absorb moisture). I can't say that refrigerating your Nardil will stop the urinary retention that you're experiencing, but the fact that those taking the U.K. and Australian Nardils are instructed to refrigerate their tablets should say something.
Interestingly, Gan-Lin Chen's (1986) doctoral dissertation states that phenelzine can be stored for long periods of time "if protected from the air." It was Lovering et al. (1983) who found that the hydrazine inside phenelzine tablets undergoes rapid chemical degradation in conditions with a relative humidity of at least 80 percent. What really strikes me as interesting is that Pfizer claims to have changed Nardil's formulation because of "shelf-life issues" and that the company removed an ingredient (pharmaceutical glaze) that is known to extend the shelf life of pharmaceutical tablets. I wish that I had the answer as to what could be done to make the current version of Nardil work like the "old" version (which, according to a non-scientific survey of those affected by the formulation change, caused less urinary retention). Many measures have been taken (including some of those that I mentioned in my first post here) to try to make Nardil more effective and more tolerable, but as far as I can tell, it doesn't seem that following any of these measures led to good long-term results for anybody.
Tomatheus
==
REFERENCES
Chen, G.-L. (1986). The chemical kinetics of phenelzine degradation. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Iowa, Iowa City.
Lovering, E. G., Matsui, F., Curran, N. M., Robertson, D. L., & Sears, R. W. (1983). Hydrazine levels in formulations of hydralazine, isoniazid, and phenelzine over a 2-year period. Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, 72, 965-967. Abstract: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6620160
Dx: schizoaffective disorder
Taking Abilify and 6 supplements
tomatheus.blogspot.com
poster:Tomatheus
thread:1021031
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20120630/msgs/1021140.html