![]() The next time you face the drug expiration date dilemma, consider what you've learned here. And, really, if a drug manufacturer had to do expiration-date testing for longer periods it would slow their ability to bring you new and improved formulations. Or you can also look at it this way: The expiration dates are very conservative to ensure you get everything you paid for. Is the expiration date a marketing ploy by drug manufacturers, to keep you restocking your medicine cabinet and their pockets regularly? You can look at it that way. Placing a medication in a cool place, such as a refrigerator, will help a drug remain potent for many years. Excluding nitroglycerin, insulin, and liquid antibiotics, most medications are as long-lasting as the ones tested by the military. It's true the effectiveness of a drug may decrease over time, but much of the original potency still remains even a decade after the expiration date. A rare exception to this may be tetracycline, but the report on this is controversial among researchers. Medical authorities state if expired medicine is safe to take, even those that expired years ago. So, the expiration date doesn't really indicate a point at which the medication is no longer effective or has become unsafe to use. What they found from the study is 90% of more than 100 drugs, both prescription and over-the-counter, were perfectly good to use even 15 years after the expiration date. With a large and expensive stockpile of drugs, the military faced tossing out and replacing its drugs every few years. Most of what is known about drug expiration dates comes from a study conducted by the Food and Drug Administration at the request of the military. This is the date at which the manufacturer can still guarantee the full potency and safety of the drug. Since a law was passed in 1979, drug manufacturers are required to stamp an expiration date on their products. It turns out that the expiration date on a drug does stand for something, but probably not what you think it does. ![]() A column published in Psychopharmacology Today offers some advice. This is a dilemma many people face in some way or another. So, does medicine expire? Do you take it or don't you? If you decide to take the medication, will it be a fatal mistake or will you simply continue to suffer from the headache? And how long is a prescription good for? The big question is, do pills expire? With a splitting headache, you reach into your medicine cabinet for some aspirin or ibuprofen only to find the stamped expiration date on the medicine bottle is more than a year out of date. FDA study gets to the heart of expired medicine and safety
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