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We’ve all been there. Stuck with aches, pains, and runny nose, and the cough medicine
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in the cabinet is five years old. The question is, do you take it and risk it? Or toss it
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and suffer?
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Hey pill poppers Julia here for DNews
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We’ve talked on DNews before about food expirations dates or ‘sell by’ dates as
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they’re sometimes called. And we’ve found well.. there is less actual rules and more like
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guidelines. Most food lasts well beyond that date. Others, well you have do a quick sniff
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test. But have you ever noticed that medication has an expiration date too? Rachael Lee asked us,
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Can you get sicker from expired medicine?
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The FDA started slapping an expiration date on medicines in 1979. So it’s been over
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30 years since that decision, has it made a difference?
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Typically the expiration date is set a year to five years beyond the date of manufacture.
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It’s less of an expiration date and more of a date of guaranteed potency. Basically
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after that date, manufacturers can’t guarantee the drug will be 100% potent, it doesn’t
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necessarily mean it will be unsafe or less effective.
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But there’s some evidence that some medicines can hold their potency for quite awhile especially
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in controlled conditions.
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A study conducted by the FDA on behalf of the Military found ways to extend the life
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of medicines in storage in a program called SLEP or shelf life extension program. They
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found that they could extend the life of 88% of the drugs in government facilities by at least
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a year by simply keeping them in climate controlled storage. Most drugs lasted on average five
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and half years past the expiration date.
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While civilians like you and I might not have access to tightly controlled storage facilities,
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there’s always the fridge. Which some experts recommend a cool, dry place, for extending
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the life of your medication.
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But maybe drugs last longer than five years even without chilling the fed’s fridge. One
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study published in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine found that some medicines
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can hold their own for DECADES. In this study, all the drugs were all 28-40 years past their due date.
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They only looked at a handful of medicines, 8 different medications like with 15 different
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compounds between them like caffeine, aspirin, or hydrocodone. They found that most, 12 of
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those compounds remained in amounts of at least 90% decades after their expiration date.
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And that 90% is crucial, that’s how much of the good stuff a drug needs to be considered
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“effective” by the FDA. So most of the decades old medicine didn’t break down or lose it’s
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potency. Although two medicines, aspirin and amphetamine, seem to lose some of their juice
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after all that time. They were present in amounts less than 90%.
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But before you go poppin grandma’s pills, which you shouldn’t take anyone else's pills
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anyways…. that’s illegal. But really the FDA recommends listening to those expiration
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dates. They caution that drugs gone bad could be “less effective or risky due to a change
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in chemical composition or decrease in potency.”
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FDA pharmacist, Ilisa Bernstein, straight up says “If your medicine has expired, do
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not use it.” Especially with living saving drugs like an epi-pen. If a drug’s expired,
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the FDA recommends tossing it. The best way to dispose of a drug is usually on the bottle
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or some cities have prescription medicine take back programs. So look into that if you’re
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worried about all the leftover medication in your bathroom cabinet.
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So it seems drugs last longer than their “good by” date, but at the end of the day I’d
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still listen to the FDA just to be on the safe side.
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But it’s not just medicines that expire, there’s lots of common things you didn’t
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know have an expiration date. Trace has the whole list of things in your house that go
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bad, right here.
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Bleach is what is being used by the CDC in their labs and it has an expiration date of only six months from the day of manufacture.
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so like, 3-5 months once you get it home.
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So you've ever used expired medicine before? noticed anything weird? Tell us about it down in the comments below. And thanks Rachel for your question.
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If you guys have any more questions that you'd like us to answer here on DNews, submit words down below
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Don't forget to hit those like and subscribe button to keep coming back to DNews, so you don't miss a single episode.