this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
355 points (99.2% liked)
Asklemmy
43952 readers
860 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Medicine.
Yes, kinda. That is use a brand that is certified by your country's health service. But use generics not the named brand drugs once available.
I disagree. This is really a case by case basis.
As a medical doctor I strongly object to this. Generics are tightly regulated. The substance is the same. What can vary is the binding materials and alike. In very, very rare cases a patient can be allergic to a substance that is specific to a certain brand (and not part of the active substance). This has happened to me only twice. In some countries anticonvusants are the exception where generics aren't used, but that is not practiced everywhere.
Might depend on country of course. But yeah in my country medicine is so tightly regulated that the brand stuff is chemically identical to the generics anyways, they kinda all have to be.
Do you object to the statement that generics are equivalent to brands, or that they aren't?
There are a lot of things that go into medications, as you pointed out, and allergens are the most severe - and not dismissable! - differrence. When a drug goes out of protection, the company is only required to release the mechanism of action; they aren't required to release the bindings you mentioned, or the coatings. They aren't required to release packaging info, which can affect the ease of which an arthritic patient - or a child - can access medications. Bindings and coatings affect release rates, which affects how the medication interacts with the body.
There is a substantial difference between formulations and packaging that affects some drugs. This isn't to say name brand is always better, but that there are differences.
I'd guess that you do not personally have a chronic illness for which you've been taking a medication for several years - am I right? Is your experience with generics all second-hand, through your patients?
In the US, the common experience of sufferers of chronic conditions is that pharmacies switch out generics every year as they jockey for higher profit margins. These people will confirm that there are definitely differences between formulations that affect percieved effectiveness. Should we write this common experience off as imagination?
I've had issues with generics when time release is involved. It is common enough that the pharmacist involved knew exactly what I was talking about, when I raised it. They've found that a good number of patients notice the difference. Some prefer the generic, others dislike it.
I agree with you, It's generally true, but they can have significant differences. I'm on a meditation, and had the brand changed to a cheaper generic, there was a significant difference. It turns out, while the dose is the same, the delivery profile isn't. It was akin to a straight vodka, followed by a coke, Vs a vodka and coke.
Paracetamol etc, however, have no real differences.
Generics and name brand drugs can differ in how the active ingredient is released i.e rate that they're absorbed but if that isn't too important (for most people it won't be) active ingredient is active ingredient no matter where it is from.
Exactly. Although in some cases the active ingredient can vary a small amount which might have a difference