Thanks for raising the issue @longinthetooth and for the contributions in the replies. There has been the topic raised in the news recently about potential medicine shortages, so it will be interesting to see if this is having an impact on the products people are receiving. Under the Australia Consumer Law, products need to be fit for purpose which I would think would cover the need for certain medicines to last for a ‘reasonable’ time.
If anyone else has an experience with a use-by date on a medicine that is too short, please post it to this thread. I will also flag this with the relevant teams within CHOICE.
As this comment suggests, the organic compounds in most pharmaceuticals will slowly break-down over time. I’ve had a pharmacist confirmed this, and my GP says the same.
They are designed to work as described (including with whatever risks are listed) until the expiry date if stored under the conditions specified (in the dark; within temperature range and so on as the case may be). They don’t cease working upon expiry, they simply fall below the level of effectiveness described.
If the package reads “discard within one month of opening” or similar, then the contents either oxidize once exposed to air, or accumulate pathogens. Otherwise, they’re simply less effective.
Are you sure that in Australia “each company has to do their own expiry testing”, or is that merely something the public have been led to believe is the reasonable thing to do and we have trusted them to do it?
Been working in the field for 30 years, any changes to the container type or material, excipients (inert ingredients), region (temp and humidity) of even the same company’s product requires reassessment and possible redo of their own stability data.
Leaves us average consumers wondering whether we are getting a fair/best deal as a nation? Especially given a large portion of the cost of pharmaceuticals to the nation are submerged in the costs of the PBS.
How would you determine if the various agencies that assess and recommend drugs, negotiate prices etc are doing their job and protecting the user from inferior products and the public purse against overpaying? It is a rather specialised field, I suppose there are international standards and prices to compare.
Thanks. Where are the results of this published? I couldn’t find anything on the TGA website, but I may not be searching adequately.
As consumers it the hard data that is important rather than the marketing outcome. Clearly short expiry periods benefit the Pharma companies, whereas long, indefinite periods benefit consumers. There is no reason to assume that companies will market products based on consumer benefit.
What you are asking for is just not going to happen. Far too much time and cost involved for no cost savings, when it comes to Australia. To a large extent we need to rely on such assessments being done overseas. Even when the overseas work has been of the highest quality, the TGA often won’t accept it ad want it to be repeated in Australia, thus denying Australians goor therapeutics.\
As to the digoxin, that was predictable. Take the bottle our of the fridge and the cold will cause condensation inside the container which when sealed and back in the fridge provides an unacceptable environment contributing to fungus etc. She should have spoken to her Pharmacist first.
I don’t think that this is as worrying as one might suppose. With factory consolidation over the last 30 years, one factory often produces much of the world’s supply for a product and/or a factory is tightly scheduling in production of multiple products for multiple countries, with specific packaging for each country. It is generally in the Australian company’s, wholesalers’s, pharmacist’s and consumer’s common interest to have as long a shelf life as possible, to avoid stock shortages of the local product.
Some medicines, like some insecticides for human and veterinary medicine, can become more potent and have killed humans and animals.
Some, like antibiotics, may degrade rapidly.
Having just received a bottle of generic common meds with an unexpectedly short use-by date I consulted Dr.Google and unexpectedly discovered this from 2003 and last updated in August 2020.
and this one updated as of 2023 with the same message.
The final sentences in the Harvard link are important as potency does get lost over time and there are some medicines that are noted as being exempted from the generality of ‘90% are good for 15 years’.
The second link references how aspirin was tested that is a bit enlightening.
I am not advocating using meds years beyond their dates, but likewise for those binning them the day after it could be a waste. How to tell is the crux of it because an individual has no way to know with 100% surety other than referencing the use-by date. For me these and many similar articles published this century along with reviews and updates put an unexpected light on the topic.
I don’t bin any drugs except those I know I won’t ever use and I don’t bin them, I send them back to the pharmacy, because I worry that someone might spot them after they get binned and take them, just because.
