How do different brands of medicine under the same generic name differ?
In: Chemistry
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.
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