Tracking my efforts to beat Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), aka CFIDS, aka CFS

Tracking my efforts to beat Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), aka CFIDS, aka CFS

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Minor Differences in Generic Rx's Can Have Major Effects

About a month ago, I mysteriously started experiencing serious stomach pain.  I haven't had significant gut issues since my acute phase, before I changed my diet.  This new pain got to the point where it became unbearable and I couldn't think of much else.

Again, I turned to my daily health chart to see if I could find answers.  The only significant change I noticed near the time of the onset of the stomach pains (four days earlier) was that I had switched brands of generic Valacyclovir.  For more than a year prior, every time I went to the pharmacy, they would dispense a particular generic brand.  This one time, all of a sudden, the bottle looked different and I was given a different brand.  I didn't think anything of it.  I figured all the generic brands were pretty much the same....until 10 days later when I noticed a possible connection on my health chart.

To test whether the new brand was actually responsible for the pain, I took a "holiday" from Valcyclovir for a few days.  The stomach pains subsided.  As soon as I resumed Valacyclovir, the pains returned.

For the past few months, I had been meaning to change pharmacies, so this was the motivation I needed to make it happen.  I switched from a national chain to a local compounding pharmacy.  I told the new pharmacist about my experiences with the different generic brands.  He said it's fairly common. Obviously, he said, the active ingredients in the generic brands are the same, but each generic brand contains different "fillers."

My refill with the new pharmacy was with a third generic brand--one I'd never tried before.  I've been taking the new brand for about a week and it hasn't caused any trouble.  Since that experience, I've searched the internet for further information on this issue, and it appears to be a fairly common problem, not only among brands of Valacyclovir but any type of drug with multiple generic options. The lesson I learned is that, just because a generic drug doesn't agree with me, doesn't mean that drug is off limits.  I may be reacting to an inactive ingredient.  I suppose the only way to find out is to try another generic brand ... or Google it!




7 comments:

  1. Hi Patrick! My name is Cameron Von St. James and I had a quick question for you! I was wondering if you could email me at your earliest convenience at cvonstjames AT gmail DOT com :-) I greatly appreciate your time!!

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    1. Hi Cameron. sorry for the delay, I was on vacation. I will email you now....

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  2. Thanks for this heads up. Shared on Twitter, FB and Google+.

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  3. I've run into this a few times. My gyno had to change my birth control in order to keep me from getting a generic because of the side effects that it caused. Also, while the fillers are a big part of it, the variance in the active ingredients between name-brand and generic meds can actually be pretty large. This has caused me issues on other meds, where I found that a name-brand worked fine, but it took twice as much of the generic to do the same job.

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    1. Hmmm, I didn't know that about the difference in active ingredients, but it makes sense. thanks Julie!

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  4. This has happened to me a lot. Apparently the approval process for generics is much less rigorous (sorry, I don't remember the source on that). If you keep track of the manufacturers that you can take you might be able to get a pharmacy to order them for you. The Raley's pharmacy actually put notes in my account that my prescriptions have to be from designated manufacturers, and that's been amazing. Good luck!

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  5. Can I ask what specific tests lead your doctor to prescribe Valacyclovir and whether it's been any help and how long you've been on it? I have a lot of high viral test results, but not a lot of help for them.

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