Learn to Read Medication Boxes, Part 1

I kept debating about what my next post should be about.  What I finally decided on surrounds a topic that I run into on a daily basis....how to read a medication box.  I want to begin to teach you something important.  When you walk into the pharmacy and ask for Tylenol®, what you are buying is a name brand.  What I want you to start thinking about, rather, is buying an ingredient.  

There are only a select number of prescription medications that require consistency when sticking to a brand or generic product - thyroid supplementation, seizure, and some heart medications to name a few.  Buying a generic medication is not like buying off-brand Oreo's, where you don't know what quality you are going to get.  

Why should I trust generic medications?  Well, straight from the FDA website, "To gain FDA approval, a generic drug must:

·         Contain the same active ingredients as the innovator drug (inactive ingredients may vary)
·         Be identical in strength, dosage form, and route of administration
·         Have the same use indications
·         Be bioequivalent
·         Meet the same batch requirements for identity, strength, purity, and quality
·         Be manufactured under the same strict standards of FDA's good manufacturing practice regulations required for innovator products.*"

Bioequivalent means that a generic drug is identical to a brand name drug “in dosage form, safety, strength, route of administration, quality, performance characteristics and intended use.*”

For example, ibuprofen is an active ingredient used for inflammation, pain, and fever.  It has multiple brand names like Advil® and Motrin®.  In my medicine cabinet, I have plain old ibuprofen, no fancy name brands.  I know that when I buy any ibuprofen over-the-counter, it's going to contain the same amount of active ingredient and work the same way as the ibuprofen in the Advil and Motrin.  Why? Because ibuprofen is ibuprofen is ibuprofen...it's the same ingredient no matter how you package it.  Some companies may give an ingredient a cool name and put it in a box with pretty colors, but if the ingredient is the same as a store-brand version, why pay more for something that works just as well?

This is not an endorsement of a particular store brand.  It simply happens to be the  bottle of ibuprofen I currently have in my medicine cabinet.

Why then does my doctor recommend a brand name over-the-counter medication at my office visit?  Well, name brands are easy to remember.  Companies have done a lot of marketing research beforehand on what names stick in people's minds.  It's a lot easier for a doctor to recommend a name like Allegra® (uh-lay-gruh) than have to train patients how to ask for its generic fexofenadine (fex-oh-fen-uh-deen) in the pharmacy.  Allegra® is a whole lot easier to spell on a piece of paper too :)  If you have a name brand medicine in your cabinet, take out the box and look at it.  Somewhere next to or below the title will be smaller print saying what the active ingredient is, or it should say that at least.  So, below the word Allegra, you'll find the word fexofenadine, the active ingredient.  Once you locate what the active ingredient is, you can compare store-brand boxes around it to find a comparable generic version.

I find it easier for patients to remember what I'm saying if I don't overwhelm them with too much information.  So, I'm going to keep these lessons short so you can absorb the information as it comes.  The one main point to take away from today's lesson is:

Generic medications will work just as well as brand name medications.  The FDA requires it.

*Generic Drugs: Questions and Answers. FDA website. 11 October 2012.  http://www.fda.gov/drugs/resourcesforyou/consumers/questionsanswers/ucm100100.htm