June 24th, 2009 
admin Do you know that changing the brand of medication that you are taking can affect its effectiveness? It’s true. If you are taking a brand name and change to a generic medication or vice versa, it can be less effective.
I remember reading somewhere online that an individual noticed a difference when moving from a brand name to a generic and others noted differences when changing manufacturers. I was never one hundred percent sure, since this was someone’s personal experience with a medication. My pharmacist confirmed it.
My husband went to the pharmacy yesterday to pick up a refill of my medication. I take lamotrigine, which is generic lamictal. He took one look at the pills and said, “Hers doesn’t look like this. Are you sure it’s right?” The pills were much smaller and that would have been a huge plus. ( Lamotrigine is a large round pill that I have to choke down every single night.) They were the same milligram but it was a different manufacturer. The pharmacist looked back at what I had been getting and told him that he was right. It was indeed a different brand and they would have to give me the same brand because changing them could affect how well they worked.
Ok then. I’m still choking down the pill every night but at least it will keep working like it has. I don’t want to risk a setback so I’ll stick to the lamotrigine, even though they could be shaped differently so they would be easier to swallow. (Hint, hint, manufacturer.)
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The only reason it would have any affect is placebo. It’s really stupid to think there would be any significant difference between the exact same thing made by two different companies.
This isn’t always true. My husband has been a pain management patient for many years now. His prescribed pain medication has generics made by several different companies. One of the generics works the same, but there is one generic that does not work as well. Several other patients in this area had the same complaint about that particular generic. There was a study performed on the effectiveness of generics compared to brand names a few years back. When I have time, I’ll find the results and post them.