STILL POTENT AFTER ALL THOSE YEARS. Drug potency much longer than earlier believed. How long would you hold on to your pharmacy's drugs?

Remember mom throwing out unused drugs after a few months? Of course, there was good reason for most of them to be discarded, mostly misuse, or self-diagnosis mistreatment. And, let's remember that pharmacies don't have a choice in holding on to drugs longer than the expiration date. So, often usable drugs are destroyed. or self diagnosis and treatment.

Seems that all these years we've had nothing to fear. In a study published online in the Archives of Internal Medicine (Expired Medications and Potency) on October 8, 2012, Lee Cantrell, PharmD, from the California Poison Control System, San Diego Division, University of California San Francisco School of Pharmacy and several colleagues used liquid chromatography/mass spectromety to measure the amounts of active ingredients in several medications, decades after the drugs' expiration dates. According to the study, the medicines, which had expired 28 to 40 years ago, were found in a retail pharmacy in their original, unopened packaging.

All drugs tested, except aspirin and amphetamine, met US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) standards which state an active ingredient must be present in 90% to 110% of the amount indicated on the label.

The new findings are consistent with the efforts of the Shelf-Life Extension Program, which has extended the expiration dates on more than 80% of 122 drugs tested so far, with extensions ranging from 66 to 278 months.

The authors conclude, "Our results support the effectiveness of broadly extending expiration dates for many drugs," and state that extending shelf life can significantly lower costs to consumers.

For this to work, the manufacturers will need to implement extended self-life studies in order to document the feasibility of extended expiration dates. In lieu of that, manufacturers generally take back viable-for-use drugs, in unopened containers for full credit. With longer expiration dates, it is likely that manufacturers would cut production, reduce waste, and eliminate the return good policy. However, the existing scenario results in robust control of the prescription drug cycle, which may not be a bad thing. Let me know what you think about this evolving situation?

Here's to better solutions, 

Dave Bystrom