Heard this on Sixty Second Housecall today and was particularly
interested in the statement re 'generic drugs.' jmr
10 February 2000
You can't break tablets to save money
ANCHOR LEAD: The increase in drug costs in the last ten years has been
more than the average rate of inflation. It's lead many doctors to try
and assist patients by prescribing larger than needed tablets, then
having patients break them in half.
But in today's Sixty Second Housecall, Dr. Bob Lanier reports breaking
tablets in half could be dangerous...
Viagra is expensive.... But ironically the twenty milligram tablet costs
the SAME as the ten milligram - it doesn't take a
rocket scientist to ask for the big tablet, then break it in half.
((** This sort of thing - breaking big tablets in half is sort of an
underground secret of drug companies - some charge by the pill rather
than the dose because the expense of the drug is not
in the ingredients - it's the research and packaging.
But can you break a tablet accurately and does that matter?
A recent study asked about a hundred people to break tablets in half.
The tablets were then weighed and compared. Almost half of the tablets
had more than a ten percent size difference meaning that you
get ten percent more on one dose and ten percent
less on the next. May not sound like much.. but some medicines are dosed
so carefully that it could make a difference. **))
and it's particularly a problem in ---generic drugs that already are
allowed to fluctuate as much as ten percent from the real
drugs.---
Breaking tablets? Reconsider For more information ask your
doctor, or ask-dr-bob.com, I'm Dr. Bob Lanier.
ANCHOR TAG: Breaking a drug in quarters, especially when it is not
scored is a recipe for very inaccurate dosing.
Surprisingly, most people in this study were willing to pay much higher
prices for the not having to break tablets.
REFERENCE: Modern Med vol67 no 5, 1999, Pharmocotherapy 1998:18:193
http://www.askdrbob.com/
--
Judith Richards, London, Ontario, Canada
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Today’s Research...
Tomorrow’s Cure
--
Judith Richards, London, Ontario, Canada
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Today’s Research...
Tomorrow’s Cure
