What occurs to medications when they pass their expiration date?

Question

I have tons of old medications from prescriptions that I never finished, or giant Costco bottles of Advil etc. A doctor that I know told me that the expiration dates mean nothing and that they are just Big Pharma’s way to insert some planned obsolescence into their products.

Is this true? If not, what actually happens to the medications after their expiration dates?

In: Chemistry

Answer 1

This only means they have not done testing past this timeframe. Stability teams test different variables such as light and temp change on the compounds, and then they test these in incremental times. They are not tested past a certain point and therefore that is the cutoff date of GUARANTEE, or Conformance. Also past this time the compounds degrade and might have a lower efficacy than when “fresh”

I work in QC