Healthy Skepticism Library item: 8931

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: Journal Article

Iheanacho I.
Drug tales and other stories
BMJ 2007 Mar 17; 334:(7593):588
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/334/7593/588-a

Abstract:

Hidden extras

Last weekend The Food Magazine published research on over-the-counter medicines for young children (www.foodcomm.org.uk/latest_medicines_Mar07.htm). Its conclusion that some of these treatments contain inappropriate additives has caused understandable anxiety among parents and healthcare professionals. But this has overshadowed wider issues about the content of medicines, particularly those less safe than over-the-counter treatments.

Every working day, a doctor may unknowingly prescribe dozens of substances. This represents neither incompetence nor carelessness. Far from it: each prescription might be wholly appropriate and accurately documented. Nevertheless, it may still obscure exactly what the patient is being invited to take.

This is because of the ragbag of other substances incorporated in a prescribed medicine with the so-called active ingredient. Possibilities include coatings, colourants, printing inks, preservatives, sweeteners, flavourings, fillers, agents to facilitate binding or disintegration, lubricants and flow-enhancers-a non-exhaustive list. These excipients (and even this umbrella term may be unfamiliar to some prescribers) are . . .