Storage life of antibiotics

[Chef]

Bit of a long shot but does anyone know the 'actual' storage life of antibiotics?

Oxytetracycline broad spectrum is the AB in question.

Most of the packs I have are dated 2013/2014 but I'm pretty sure that's a conservative estimate?

C

[the-gnole]

Maximizing State and Local Medical Countermeasure Stockpile Investments Through the Shelf-Life Extension Program
http://www.upmc-biosecurity.org/website ... _cntr.html


and similar

http://www.canada.com/topics/bodyandhea ... eddc42af80

[C4tch]

"Manufacturers put expiration dates on for marketing, rather than scientific, reasons," says Mr. Flaherty, a pharmacist at the FDA until his retirement last year. "It's not profitable for them to have products on a shelf for 10 years. They want turnover."
-  Dr. Francis Flaherty, Director,
US FDA expiration testing program


Having posted the quote, I am not a medical doctor and don't know much about drugs so it's up to you to make your own mind up!

C

[Chef]

"Manufacturers put expiration dates on for marketing, rather than scientific, reasons," says Mr. Flaherty, a pharmacist at the FDA until his retirement last year. "It's not profitable for them to have products on a shelf for 10 years. They want turnover."

That wouldn't surprise me at all.

TG can you put those links in code quotes pls mate can't get the whole links to work I just get to front pages?

C

[the-gnole]

link one

link two

[Chef]

Awesome, thanks TG, that makes some very interesting reading.

C

[Fidget]

From my previous life working on the wards and being friendly with some pharmacists, I have been aware that the "Use by" dates are often conservative by up to 10 years for some time. The thing with antibiotics (as with most medication) is to maintain the best environment for them - keep them dry, at a fairly constant room-temperature, and away from light (so use containers with opaque walls if they are loose, not the brown plastic bottles that they are often decanted into). However, these days the tablets are often in blister packs, which should deal with the humidity and light issues, but means that you need to keep an eye on the integrity of the foil, which can puncture relatively easily once the strip is out of the box. I'd recommend keeping all your meds in a fairly well insulated, light-proof box (so not tupperware) with some padding to keep everything in place, and keeping the data-sheet that comes with the tablets just in case you need to check for side-effects/contra-indications.

I hope that helps (first substantive post to the forum!)

[bhakta]

This response may be duplicated in the above links BUT the antibiotic u ask about - oxytetracyline - is the only one that may actually become dangerous past its sell by date

"Second, medical authorities uniformly say it is safe to take drugs past their expiration date - no matter how "expired" the drugs purportedly are. Except for possibly the rarest of exceptions, you won't get hurt and you certainly won't get killed. A contested example of a rare exception is a case of renal tubular damage purportedly caused by expired tetracycline (reported by G. W. Frimpter et al., in the Journal of the American Medical Association, JAMA, 184:111, 1963). This outcome (disputed by other scientists) was supposedly caused by a chemical transformation of the active ingredient. "

Other antibiotics will just become less effective as the years go by - at least they won't harm you. They may just not cure your pneumonia or bubonic plague.

[archer1958]

Thanks for the info F