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Thank You, Seamus Tuohy for this generous and important addendum. David. -------------------------- On Thu, 18 Jul 1996, Seamus Tuohy wrote: > There seems to be some confusion about this which I can help to clarify. > > The trade name is the name individual drug companies use to market a generic drug. The generic name of the drug is carbidopa-levodopa which is what we PD people need. It has been marketed as Sinemet(that is its trade name) by the Merck Sharp and Dohme company. MSD had the original patent for this drug, so it couldn't be marketed by any other company until the patent expired. > > Here in Australia two other companies have recently started marketing carbidopa-levodopa at cheaper prices. They are called Kinson(marketed by drug company Alphapharm) and Sinacarb(marketed by drug company Amrad). Carbidopa-levodopa prescriptions are subsidised by the Australian government so that pensioners pay $2-70 for 100 tablets and others pay $17-40 (for the same number of tablets). However if you opt for Sinemet rather than one of the other two drugs your pharmacist will charge a premium of about $2-00, that's because MSD charge more for their brand of Carbidopa-levodopa than the other two companies. It is important to remember that all three brands(Sinemet, Kinson and Sinacarb) are exactly the same generic drug carbidopa-levodopa. And by the way Sinacarb 100/25 and Kinson 100/25 even look like Sinemet100/25(yellow oval shaped tablet). One more slighly confusing thing to note is that there is no 100/10 or 250/25 strength of Kinson. > > Hope this is clear > > Seamus Tuohy > ([log in to unmask]) >