Posted on 07/19/2019 1:52:58 PM PDT by Sheapdog
The box of prescription drugs had been forgotten in a back closet of a retail pharmacy for so long that some of the pills predated the 1969 moon landing. Most were 30 to 40 years past their expiration dates — possibly toxic, probably worthless.
But to Lee Cantrell, who helps run the California Poison Control System, the cache was an opportunity to answer an enduring question about the actual shelf life of drugs: Could these drugs from the bell-bottom era still be potent?
Cantrell called Roy Gerona, a University of California, San Francisco researcher who specializes in analyzing chemicals. Gerona grew up in the Philippines and had seen people recover from sickness by taking expired drugs with no apparent ill effects.
"This was very cool," Gerona says. "Who gets the chance of analyzing drugs that have been in storage for more than 30 years?"
The age of the drugs might have been bizarre, but the question the researchers wanted to answer wasn't. Pharmacies across the country in major medical centers and in neighborhood strip malls routinely toss out tons of scarce and potentially valuable prescription drugs when they hit their expiration dates.
Gerona, a pharmacist; and Cantrell, a toxicologist, knew that the term "expiration date" was a misnomer. The dates on drug labels are simply the point up to which the Food and Drug Administration and pharmaceutical companies guarantee their effectiveness, typically at two or three years. But the dates don't necessarily mean they're ineffective immediately after they "expire" — just that there's no incentive for drugmakers to study whether they could still be usable.
(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
ProPublica has been researching why the U.S. health care system is the most expensive in the world. One answer, broadly, is waste — some of it buried in practices that the medical establishment and the rest of us take for granted. We’ve documented how hospitals often discard pricey new supplies, how nursing homes trash valuable medications after patients die or move out, and how drug companies create expensive combinations of cheap drugs. Experts estimate such squandering eats up about $765 billion a year — as much as a quarter of all the country’s health care spending.
What if the system is destroying drugs that are technically “expired” but could still be safely used?
In his lab, Gerona ran tests on the decades-old drugs, including some now defunct brands such as the diet pills Obocell (once pitched to doctors with a portly figurine called “Mr. Obocell”) and Bamadex. Overall, the bottles contained 14 different compounds, including antihistamines, pain relievers and stimulants. All the drugs tested were in their original sealed containers.
The findings surprised both researchers: A dozen of the 14 compounds were still as potent as they were when they were manufactured, some at almost 100 percent of their labeled concentrations.
“Lo and behold,” Cantrell says, “The active ingredients are pretty darn stable.”
Cantrell and Gerona knew their findings had big implications. Perhaps no area of health care has provoked as much anger in recent years as prescription drugs. The news media are rife with stories of medications priced out of reach or of shortages of crucial drugs, sometimes because producing them is no longer profitable.
Tossing such drugs when they expire is doubly hard. One pharmacist at Newton-Wellesley Hospital outside Boston said the 240-bed facility is able to return some expired drugs for credit but had to destroy about $200,000 worth last year. A commentary in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings cited similar losses at the nearby Tufts Medical Center. Play that out at hospitals across the country and the tab is significant: about $800 million per year. And that doesn’t include the costs of expired drugs at long-term-care and retail pharmacies and in consumer medicine cabinets.
Article is much longer and is a few years old but thought it was interesting. Found it when looking into effectiveness of some expired medicine.
I’ve had aspirin that was 10+ years old and it was still effective...............
Stored properly and kept from extremes of heat and cold they would probably be good for a century or two................
My wife is a pharmacist. She has told me that generally drugs past the expiration date have usually lost 10% of their effectiveness.
It would have to be, in most circumstances. Although, I think it would depend a bit on the specific details of degradation a stored drug experiences.
Think of this: Most medicines come with an expiration date that is suitable with some safety margin for half-assed storage in an uncontrolled, hot environment. Like, a medicine cabinet in a non-air-conditioned Texas or Florida home.
Most storage, on the other hand, occurs at around 70 degrees F, where you’d expect chemical reactions to be much slower. Roughly speaking, a rise/drop of 10 degrees (C) doubles/halves the rate of most chemical reactions. So, in most cases, you can tack at least a few years onto any stated expiration date without much worry.
Badger, it is my understanding that aspirin in particular is very dangerous to use past the expiration. Check it out.
“Mr. O-bocell and BAMA-dex.”
I thought you were joking when I first saw those names. Holy cow!
As far as i’m concerned, drugs are like ammunition... they never expire. Expiration dates are gimmicks to throw out the “old” so that you have to buy more of the new-er.
If there is a vinegar smell, the aspirin has gone bad and should be tossed...................
Great article. Thanks for the post.
I’m with you up to a point. The expiration date is just the length of time the drug companies (with cooperation from the FDA) will study their potency. They won’t guarantee them after that date in part because they don’t test them longer. But it is also self-serving that they don’t test them longer, and the FDA plays along. Some drugs will go bad, certain antibiotics for example. But most tablets if kept stored in darkness and without wild fluctuations in temperature will probably last decades.
As an occasional sufferer of seasonal allergies, I can assure you that Benadryl has a short shelf-life after the expiration date. The stuff will not work well, or at all, shortly after its use date.
Antibiotics, on the other hand, seem to last many years after its expiration date.
I think it strongly depends on the particular drug.
Some are fine and effective for many years, some indeed have a limited time during which they are effective.
But it is not reasonable to have a blanket x years of effectiveness assigned to each drug.
https://www.acsh.org/news/2018/09/30/when-aspirin-goes-bad-it-bad-13459
I take aspirin years past its expiration date. At a penny each, why waste money?
US military came to the same money-saving conclusion from what I recall...
I heard decades ago that aspirin is still good, until the container has a vinegary smell. Then, it should be discarded.
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