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The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists reports a shortage of tetracycline hydrochloride capsules from Teva Pharmaceuticals and Watson Pharma. The current FDA-approved information regarding this drug is provided on the Watson website. (UPDATED LINK) Perhaps you have been discouraged from reading documents like this by the small print or the technical nature of the information provided. Your doctor can help with the latter, but I am taking this opportunity to point out that enlarging the text to 200% or greater in a PDF reader is a big help for readability. You could do this on a copier as well.
Since I routinely look for this kind of information on-line as part of my business activities, one of the first things I do is go to the end of the document and see when it was produced. In this case you can see that it was last revised in July 2011. Prominently displayed above the date is where the drug is manufactured (India) and where it is distributed (US). This information can be useful if you have heard of manufacturing problems at a particular location, or want to find out whether there are any.
There are probably quite a few people who are aware that tetracycline can discolor your teeth, and detailed information about that can be found under CONTRAINDICATIONS, p. 1, column 2, paragraphs 2 and 3. The first line in this section contains useful information, but is also an example of how the information presented is not so straightforward. The tetracyclines are a group of antibiotics, of which tetracycline is the founding member. If you are hypersensitive, i.e., allergic, to one member of the group, you are going to be hypersensitive to all of them. I hasten to add that this is not true of all drug groupings, so you can't generalize.
Now look further up the same column at INDICATIONS AND USAGE. In previous posts I explained what an indication is in the medical sense of the word, and explained off-label use. In this section of the document you will find the list of what the FDA considers valid reasons to use tetracycline hydrochloride capsules. Any other use is an off-label use, by definition. Please recall from my previous post that there are sometimes good reasons for off-label use of a drug.
Still in INDICATIONS AND USAGE, the first line, notice the words "susceptible strains" and the subheading Susceptibility Testing at the top of the column, where there is a technical explanation of how a susceptible strain is defined in this case. There have been many reports of antibiotic-resistant strains in the media, and there are many that are resistant to tetracycline. So many, in fact, that I personally would not take this drug unless the prescribing doctor was first willing to send a sample of whatever was infecting me to the lab for an antibiotic-sensitivity test. (Antibiotic susceptibility and sensitivity are the same thing.) If you read on through the CONTRAINDICATIONS section, you can see that there are valid reasons not to take this antibiotic, and you are going to need professional help in order to know whether any apply to you.
Since I routinely look for this kind of information on-line as part of my business activities, one of the first things I do is go to the end of the document and see when it was produced. In this case you can see that it was last revised in July 2011. Prominently displayed above the date is where the drug is manufactured (India) and where it is distributed (US). This information can be useful if you have heard of manufacturing problems at a particular location, or want to find out whether there are any.
There are probably quite a few people who are aware that tetracycline can discolor your teeth, and detailed information about that can be found under CONTRAINDICATIONS, p. 1, column 2, paragraphs 2 and 3. The first line in this section contains useful information, but is also an example of how the information presented is not so straightforward. The tetracyclines are a group of antibiotics, of which tetracycline is the founding member. If you are hypersensitive, i.e., allergic, to one member of the group, you are going to be hypersensitive to all of them. I hasten to add that this is not true of all drug groupings, so you can't generalize.
Now look further up the same column at INDICATIONS AND USAGE. In previous posts I explained what an indication is in the medical sense of the word, and explained off-label use. In this section of the document you will find the list of what the FDA considers valid reasons to use tetracycline hydrochloride capsules. Any other use is an off-label use, by definition. Please recall from my previous post that there are sometimes good reasons for off-label use of a drug.
Still in INDICATIONS AND USAGE, the first line, notice the words "susceptible strains" and the subheading Susceptibility Testing at the top of the column, where there is a technical explanation of how a susceptible strain is defined in this case. There have been many reports of antibiotic-resistant strains in the media, and there are many that are resistant to tetracycline. So many, in fact, that I personally would not take this drug unless the prescribing doctor was first willing to send a sample of whatever was infecting me to the lab for an antibiotic-sensitivity test. (Antibiotic susceptibility and sensitivity are the same thing.) If you read on through the CONTRAINDICATIONS section, you can see that there are valid reasons not to take this antibiotic, and you are going to need professional help in order to know whether any apply to you.
9 comments:
TCN DOES NOT turn an adults teeth brown!!!! If you had any medical
knowledge , then you would understand that it will turn the brown of a fetus. That is a reason why the drug in contraindicated to take if you are plannning on/or already pregnant!!!!
i work in a pharmacy, (for 18 years now) i heard from a pt. that TCN has been found to work very well in some cases of (MRSA), SO ONE OF THE BIG pharmaceutical comp. is trying to get patton for it. this from a pt. that had been on TCN for 16 years but now she had to switch to Minocyclin
I've taken Tetracycline capsules for at least 15 years for Rosacea with no bad effects. My teeth are white. I recently went off it and have developed a case of dermatitis Hepateformis that comes with celiac disease. Some research shows that HP can be kept at bay by tertracycline, which seems to be the case for me. I do not have the GI problems typical for celiacs, just the skin. Miss that tetracycline. I am allergic to Minocycline. Any chance Tetracycline will come back?
If you click on the link to the ASHP bulletin, you will see that it was last updated March 20, 2012, and that it doesn't seem likely that tetracycline will be manufactured in the near future.
Who is BIG PHARMA trying to fool? Of course they are creating a supply vs demand issue. Take away TCN that costs a nickel a pill for the consumer, make them pay a dollar a pill for minocycline. In a year they will have "a new TCN formulation that works much better, faster, longer, etc" and the pharmaceutical company can charge mega bucks for it. Such a scam on the poor consumer.
Of course this is business as usual in the pharmacy department!!! Supply and demand. Bet they come up with something costing 3 times as much!!!! To bad everyone can't quit buying medications and let them eat their own pills!!!!
The pharmaceutical industry should be absolutely ashamed of itself. But in the good ole USA, isn't that what it's all about? Making as much money as possible without any regard for whom is hurt in the aftermath. I took Tetracycline for years, and it successfully took care of a horrific scalp acne problem. Now, they've denied me of it, just so they can take this inexpensive drug off the market, and replace it with something that will once again be expensive. Let greedom ring...
Tetracycline is antiflammatory in addition to being antibacertial.
That's why it works for cases of skin inflammation such as rosacea.
This happened when the natural Armore thyroid started to disappear, because they wanted people to pay for the more expensive synthetics that lacked all of the necessary ingredients (T-4's) that Armore had. Tetracycline has never discolored my teeth and I took it for 27 years. It worked great. The expensive junk I take now isn't working. The pharmaceutical companies are full of crap! They are as bad as the gas companies in consumer control
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