this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2023
278 points (98.9% liked)

Health - Resources and discussion for everything health-related

2398 readers
561 users here now

Health: physical and mental, individual and public.

Discussions, issues, resources, news, everything.

See the pinned post for a long list of other communities dedicated to health or specific diagnoses. The list is continuously updated.

Nothing here shall be taken as medical or any other kind of professional advice.

Commercial advertising is considered spam and not allowed. If you're not sure, contact mods to ask beforehand.

Linked videos without original description context by OP to initiate healthy, constructive discussions will be removed.

Regular rules of lemmy.world apply. Be civil.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

A loophole in FDA processes means older drugs like the ones in oral decongestants weren’t properly tested. Here’s how we learned the most popular one doesn’t work

In 2005, federal law compelled retailers nationwide to move pseudoephedrine, sold as Sudafed, from over-the-counter (OTC) to behind it, so as to combat its use in making illicit methamphetamine. This move changed the formulas of cough and cold medicines in the U.S.. It also led me and my colleague Leslie Hendeles to prove that pseudoephedrine’s replacement, oral phenylephrine, was ineffective as a decongestant.

We petitioned the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) twice, yet it took the agency more than a decade and a half to act on our findings.

In September, an agency advisory panel finally agreed with our conclusion that this compound did little to quell congestion and recommended that products containing it be pulled from shelves. If FDA acts on this recommendation, oral phenylephrine could be the first OTC drug approved under the agency’s “monograph” process to be discontinued. But in the meantime, millions of people have been trusting the FDA’s OTC regulatory process to ensure that medications work, but instead have been wasting money for nearly two decades on ones that don’t.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yea, cause no one sold snake oil back in the day. Just a bunch of honest Joes with the government holding them back.

[–] robotopera 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Give me ye olden days cough sizzurp

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You can still get that. It's just called codeine now. Or am I thinking of heroin? Or is it cocaine? Well it's one of them. Just give each one a go. They're petty harmless.

[–] robotopera 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Hahaha, amphetamine inhaler! I was born far too late, the golden age of drugs is long gone.