I’ve often wondered what I should do with these expired medicines — whether and how I should get rid of them, if they’re unsafe to use or whether some might still work perfectly well. I dug into the research and reached out to three eminent pharmacists, one of whom has studied expired medicines, to gain some insight.
For many prescription drugs, however, what you see on your bottle is not an expiration date but a “beyond use” date. The beyond use date is typically sooner than the medication’s original expiration date, explained Mr James Stevenson, a pharmacist at the University of Michigan College of Pharmacy and the chief clinical officer at the health care technology company Omnicell.
In a small 2012 study, Dr Cantrell and three colleagues tested eight drugs, containing 14 widely differing active ingredients, that had been sitting unopened in a pharmacy closet with expiration dates that had passed between 28 and 40 years earlier. They found that 86 per cent of the drugs’ ingredients were still present in the concentrations they were supposed to be.
In fact, the FDA sometimes tests expired drugs needed for public health emergencies and extends their expiration dates if they are found to work and be safe.
Source: Healthcare Press (healthcarepress.net)
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