Shoreline

The FDA allows a plus 15% and minus 20% variation and will still give a generic their highest rating. There are definite differences in some products. The biggest that comes to mind is the Mellenkropts methadose and Roxannes methadone.

I actually had a 10mg methadose tab analyzed and found it had 8.3 mgs of methadone and whole lot of glucose and other fillers. A methadose tab is about twice the size of a generic Roxanne methadone tab but the Roxanne product is clearly supperior. The difference in methadose is enough to cause people to experience withdrawal. Say your dose is 100mgs a day and lets assume Roxxane uses the full 10mgs in every tab if not even more, possibly 11.5mgs.

You body is used to taking the Roxanne and getting 100mgs of meth, possibly even 15% more. If you replace that with 10 Methadose tabs that conatin 8.3mgs of meth your new dose is now 83 mgs of meth a day and a 20% decrease in meth is enough for your average person to feel the difference. It took me 3 weeks to get used to the weaker tablet the one time I accepted the methadose brand.The real kicker is that Mellenkropt is the only manufacturer of bulk methadone and sells it's methadone HCL to Roaxxane and to the manufacturer of name brand Dolophine, yet they still choose to scrimp by on the lowest amount they are allowed in each pill while their competitors that must by their bulk methadone for formulation into tablets or liquid must purchase their bulk meth from mellenkropt.

Right Now I'm sitting her waiting and hoping the one pharmacy in town that still uses Methadone by Roxanne will get their shipment in today. I'm bone dry, I call a week in advance, They know me so well that when I call all I have to do is say my name and they know I'm calling about the availability of 450 meth tabs. Thankfully meth is pretty forgiving, I've had to wait until 5pm for my first dose and the only problem I had was increased pain, no withdrawal because of the long half life and time to eliminate meth from your sytem.

This isn't the case with all generics though.

Often a manufacturer of a name brand product will also have a generic line. Norco is made by Watson, the generic for Norco is also made by watson. So in that case I would think the generic is going to be pretty close.

A more interesting example is Endo's Percocet. The endo product contains 4.3 mgs of OXycocodone Hydrochloride and .7 mgs of Oxycodone Biotartrate. and 325mgs of apap. Endo makes a generic percocet called Endocet. I haven't seen the chemical breakdown on the Endocet but I know other manufacturers of generic percs only use Oxycocdone hydrochloride. That .7 mgs of Oxy Biotartrate can be left out and still pass the -20% criteria to be rated with the FDA's highest rating for Bioviability, amount of actual ingredients and comparable strength.

I had a factory bottle of generic Tylox dispensed with a label slapped on it. The factory ingredients listed 4.3 mgs of oxycodone hydrochloride and 500mgs of apap. The name brand Tylox actually contains 5mgs of Oxycodone Hydrochloride and 500mgs of apap.

There was a problem with Ativan a few years ago where the formulation or batch was so weak it caused people to have seizures. The entire line of ativan was recalled and now many people won't even try a generic version of ativan.

Personally, I'll use the generics untill I notice a difference. The pharmacy actually makes alot more money dispensing generics because the profit margin is much Higher. Every pharmacy chain my wife worked at, the pharmacists were paid a monthly bonus if their generic to name brand ratio was at a certain percentage.

The wholesale price of name brand products don't allow for the huge markup they put on generics because they pay more for name brand too. Although the savings seems to be passed on to us, the gross margin on generics is considerbly higher than the margin of profit on name brand products.So the retailer is making out on the profit margin as much as we are saving using a generic formulation that may or may not be equivelent in strength even folowing ther FDA guidlines.

If one product is plus 15% and the next month the next is on the low side of minus 20% then your talking about a 35% difference in 2 different generics, more than enough to cause withdrawal syndrome in most patients.

It doesn't sound right but those are the regulations concerning generics.
Take care, Shore