How do different brands of medicine under the same generic name differ?
In: Chemistry
They are made by different companies, and the profits from your purchase go to other people. In the US, the regulator (FDA) makes some measurements that show the active ingredients are the same, so the medication should work the same.
There are a few, very unusual, cases where the buffer (the non-medical ingredient) in the pill is different. This can be caused by different manufacturing processes, or different pill shapes. Since this isn’t the “active ingredient”, the regulator doesn’t care. But, if one buffer causes side effects for you, the “equivalent” drug might not be what you need. However, this is very rare and generally they are all equally good.
They’re not functionally different in that the same drug is present. What’s different are non-functional ingredients used for color, shape, and texture.
Functionally, they don’t. They might look different, and have different inactive ingredients such as dyes, etc. But generic drugs are required to prove that not only do they contain the same active ingredient in the same amount, but that the drug is absorbed into the bloodstream similarly as well – even if they put the exact same active ingredient in the tablet in terms of milligrams, but it was a shitty tablet that doesn’t dissolve as well and results in significantly lower amounts of the drug in the blood, it still wouldn’t be approved.
There are basically two scenarios where it *could* matter, both of which are edge cases:
1) Drugs where the dose needs to be very finely adjusted and even the slight variations between brands could be significant. The two common examples of this are thyroid hormones and warfarin, a blood thinner. The problem is that in theory, different batches of the same product could vary by the same small amounts anyway.
2) situations where the person is allergic to a particular *inactive* ingredient, like a binder or dye that is used in one tablet but not the other
99% of the time, neither of these situations apply and the effect the drugs have on you should be identical. When people claim different generics affect them differently, it is usually a placebo effect.
You, Mark, thought of the genius idea to sell pre-made snowballs.
You can make them yourself but you’re rich enough that paying someone else to make them for you actually saves you money.
So you pay Bob $100 a month to make you a ton of snowballs and put your trademark logo on it and tell Bob to give it a slight blue dye.
What you dont know, is that Bob is also making pink ones, purple ones, red ones, all for different people like you.
This is not limited to medicines, its pretty much everything.
Samsung for example makes hundreds of MILLIONS of panels for Apple alone.
Apple can make their own, but it would cost them so much that they wont make the money back for so many years that outsourcing saves them the pain.
This is why Mark Cubans drugs plost cost service is dirt cheap. Hes the middle man who does not mark (hah) up cost because he doesnt care.
It all comes down to the inactive ingredients used in each brand’s formulation, which can affect things like absorption rate and potential side effects. It’s important to pay attention to these differences and talk to your doctor or pharmacist if you have any concerns.
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