Motorcycle Forum / Country Specific / UK Group / August 2007

It's peas isn't it?  On holiday in Norfolk once we saw this vast field
of peas which had obviously gone way past any date acceptable to Mr
Birdseye, but one of the locals said "Oh they use 'em for making pills."

And re:

Mick Whittingham's tale of waiting for aspirin in Boots: well round here
(North East) they used to be "really strict" as you describe, although
I've found recently they seem to have backed off  (perhaps as a result
of seemingly decent coves like you and me COMPLETELY LOSING IT when some
dumbo counter assistant trots out the latest H&S policy -- more likely,
fear of being sued by survivors of a suicide, AS IF) ... anyway ... when
running low on aspirin I now go into Boots and max out on their 16-tab
packs, then pop next door to Superdrug, ditto, and pretty soon I have
enough to top myself 3 times over.  BTW Superdrug are loads cheaper:
very good shop.

John
[this thread isn't even F&M now, never mind bloody Bikes]

I'm no pharma chemist, but I always thought that the vast majority of
a tablet was inactive gunk, which just had to be there in order for it
to be big enough to take as a tablet, iyswim.

As Champ rightly says, it's all the inactive ingredients which make up
a tablet. By and large, however, they're not there to bulk it up, but
to form a nice firm whole. Many chemicals won't naturally exist in
solid form, and even those that do won't necessarily be resistant to
bashing and banging, let alone getting wet in the mouth.

None to different brands of the same, as I explained to Cab. But
different formualtions of the same compound may include, for example,
a coating to make a tablet lett likely to dissolve immediately in the
stomach, when it will be more effective and/or less irritant in the
intestines. Similarly, slow-acting forms of many drugs (I've got some
600mg "Brufen Retard" in front of me as I speak) may be formed into
small coated lumps before being packed together into a single tablet.
The coating can be varied to produce a more gradually disolving pill,
ideal for stomach irritants like this, or to prolong the effect, as
with some slow-acting morphine I've got next door.

But as I said, these will be recognised as a different formulation, so
any generic version of the original will not be equivalent. This can
be used to extend the life of a product - one notable example was
Glaxo's Zantac, for gastric ulcers and similar, which was due to go
off-patent in the late 1990s. At this point it became legal for anyone
to manufacture and sell generic versions of it, which would, of
course, dramatically hit sales.

By that time, however, Glaxo had, developed a new coating which both
significantly increased its tolerability - an important aspect for
stomach problems - and allowed lower doses to be as effective. They
were then able to extend the patent life by having the new formulation
licensed as a new drug.

Of course, the cynics might like to suggest that they had the coating
well in advance but saved it until they needed it. I wouldn't know
anythig about that.