Results from a November study have raised concerns about how pharmacists substitute generic medications for their name brand counterparts.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration along with the Johns Hopkins Center of Excellence coordinated the research in which they discovered that most pharmacists don’t hold a preference for one type over the other.
The study included 719 pharmacists and concluded that 53 percent of them held no preferences.
“It’s those pharmacists who have been in practice longer who have a preference for patients to receive generics with the same appearance,” Ameet Sarpatwari, a reporter with Harvard Medical School, said. “I’m not sure what to make of that.”
The study showed, however, that patients have preference of brand name products. Patients 50 years or older -- especially those taking medication to treat epilepsy, diabetes, hypertension, depression or HIV -- want to know which type of medication they are taking.
“As more widely used brand name drugs face generic competition... pharmacists might take greater care to alert patients when changes in suppliers lead to new pill characteristics,” the team behind the study said.
Study seeks data on generic medication preferences
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