MAILBOXES AND PRESCRIPTION MEDICINES
Should you be sending for your prescription drugs in the mail, especially if you live in a viciously warm climate?
The latest research shows what happens to medicines and why they don’t work if exposed to temperature extremes.
If you pick up a prescription at the pharmacy, then likely it’s been in controlled environments. But Phoenix researchers have shown high temperatures found in mailboxes can render medicines useless.
New research presented at the American College of Chest Physicians Annual Meeting in Seattle shows that mail order prescriptions exposed to excessive environmental heat, such as temperatures found in mailboxes and car interiors, may be significantly less effective for patients.
The research focused on one popular asthma medicine.
“The genius of this study was from patients complaints over at the V.A. that the medication that they were receiving in their mailboxes was disfigured, discolored, and we thought that it was probably related to the heat that the drug underwent in the mailboxes as they were being delivered,” states Dr. Gregory Chu, study researcher at the Phoenix V.A. Hospital. “We tossed a thermometer in the mailbox and we found the temperatures rose to about 70 degrees Celsius in the hot of the summer, in the heat of the summer. So, smart guys, we took the drug through it in an oven in the lab and pulled it out and as you can see the capsules that underwent heating were grossly deformed as compared to the controls that weren’t.”
These capsules contain the asthma medicine that then gets inhaled. It’s not unlike many other inhaled medicines, which need to be provided in a specific dose. Any less and it could be a life-threatening situation.
“What we did in the lab was recreate a realistic scenario or a scenario that does occur and basically the current healthcare delivery system does allow for patients to be delivered medications that are basically unsuitable for their use,” states Dr. Chu.
The researchers say that patients should avoid exposing medications to extreme heat found in mailboxes and car interiors, especially during summer months, and to inspect all mail order prescription medicines prior to taking them.
In 2003, mail order represented an estimated 17 percent of retiail prescription drug sales in the u.s. that’s more than 35 billion dollars in sales, and a more than 15 percent increase over 2002 sales.
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