How do pills expire

Expired medical products can be less effective or risky due to a change in chemical composition or a decrease in strength. Certain expired medications are at risk of bacterial growth and sub-potent antibiotics can fail to treat infections, leading to more serious illnesses and antibiotic resistance. Once the expiration date has passed there is no guarantee that the medicine will be safe and effective. If your medicine has expired, do not use it.

Failing to safely dispose of old medications, especially opioids, all too often leads to dangerous drugs ending up in the wrong hands. Finally, expired medicines are also not just a risk to the person they were prescribed for and can injure children and pets if taken by mistake. For all these reasons, proper disposal of unneeded medicines is essential.

A drug take-back program, if available, is the preferred way to dispose of expired, unwanted, or unused medicine. For example, the National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day, coordinated by the DEA, addresses a vital public safety and public health issue by focusing attention on this important issue and reminding everyone to get rid of unneeded and outdated medicines. Also, improvements in drug manufacturing and changes in drug information over time would require repeated "longevity" testing that would be impractical.

Better, they say, to pick a shorter period of time for which there is confidence a drug will stay stable and stick with that. That might be acceptable if it weren't for the pharmacist who may reduce the expiration to one year from when the prescription is written! Some states require pharmacists to do this. This came from a recommendation from the U. Pharmacopeia, a not-for-profit group that establishes standards for drug makers.

The logic is that when a drug is taken out of its original container and put in a pharmacy canister, moisture and air can degrade the pills or capsules. In addition, a patient's condition may change, new drugs may become available so that the old drug is no longer the best option , or new information may become available such as potential interactions with other drugs.

So, limiting the prescription to a year from when it's originally filled adds an extra level of safety, requiring the doctor to review whether continuing with the old medication beyond one year is still a good idea. Even with the best of intentions, this conservative standard makes it even more likely that enormous amounts of perfectly good medications will be thrown away in this country each year. We may not save that much. And we don't have the FDA to test and oversee extensions on our medicines' expiration dates.

But there is a fair amount of evidence that medications stored properly, appear intact and are not one of the exceptions mentioned above, are likely to be safe to take. A column published in Psychopharmacology Today offers some advice. It turns out that the expiration date on a drug does stand for something, but probably not what you think it does.

Since a law was passed in , drug manufacturers are required to stamp an expiration date on their products. This is the date at which the manufacturer can still guarantee the full potency and safety of the drug.

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. With a large and expensive stockpile of drugs, the military faced tossing out and replacing its drugs every few years.

So, the expiration date doesn't really indicate a point at which the medication is no longer effective or has become unsafe to use. Medical authorities state if expired medicine is safe to take, even those that expired years ago.

A rare exception to this may be tetracycline, but the report on this is controversial among researchers. 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. Excluding nitroglycerin, insulin, and liquid antibiotics, most medications are as long-lasting as the ones tested by the military.

Placing a medication in a cool place, such as a refrigerator, will help a drug remain potent for many years. 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. Or you can also look at it this way: The expiration dates are very conservative to ensure you get everything you paid for. 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.

The next time you face the drug expiration date dilemma , consider what you've learned here. And if you have any questions about the safety or effectiveness of any drug, ask your pharmacist. He or she is a great resource when it comes to getting more information about your medications.