Lyme Medications

[mschmidt]

I know there's been extensive coverage of Brand name vs Generic for Minocycline on the board but, I have a question about Lyme Meds.

Does it make a difference with the antibiotics commonly given for Lyme? I'm currently taking Biaxin, Omnicef and Plaquenil, and when I started the meds in June, my LLMD wrote the script for DNS, to give me the brand names. (per my request)  Of course, my insurance is now raising the co-pay for brand name meds.  Any suggestions would be appreciated…  I'm sure everyone can relate to how much all of this costs per month.  If I have to, and there's a real difference, I'll suck it up. 

Thanks!

Maria

[Kim]

Maria,

Brand names could run thousands of dollars a month. :doh:  I've done fine on generics.

Take care…..kim

[Maz]

[user=40]Kim[/user] wrote:

I've done fine on generics.

Me, too…I've taken all generics so far, except for Minocin. Doryx and Moxatag. No problems with generics and just chose to go for brand Minocin at the outset, as I was just so severe in the beginning and didn't want to mess around wondering which generic would work or not. The Moxatag is a newer, extended release amoxicillin, so it doesn't have a generic form yet.

Interestingly, with doxycycline, I seem to be doing better on brand name Doryx pills rather than generic doxy capsules and I take less, too…go figure. With doxy, there are different kinds, as well…doxy hyclate and doxy-mono. I have tried to search for info on the differences without much luck, but I do know of one person with Lupus (Lupus patients tend to be a little more sensitive in general) who does much better on doxy-mono rather than doxy hyclate. Go figure. 😕

Generics can vary in strength 20% either way, as per this link on the main site:

https://www.roadback.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/education.display/display_id/120.html 

“Bioequivalence

In bioequivalence studies, the goal of testing is to determine if the drugs are functionally equivalent. The FDA requires that any approved drug be effective within a 20% range of the original patented or brand name drug. This means that the effectiveness may be 20% greater or 20% less effective than the brand name so that two generic drugs could contain as much as a 40% difference from each other. Therefore, a drug may be legally chemically equivalent but not at the same time clinically equivalent. A study run on a generic of the anti-seizure, Tegretol, found the generic allowed breakthrough seizures.”

Might interest you to read the whole article at the above link, Maria, as there is some other useful info, including how some folk are sensitive to fillers and even the composition of capsules, themselves. This can figure in to the decision to go one way or another on an individual level, because where one generic may be perfectly fine for a person, they may do horribly on another generic drug.

It's probably a very individual thing in terms of responsiveness to various brands and generics, as most things tend to be with all this. Not much help, eh? :doh:

Peace, Maz

[Parisa]

My husband has done fine on generics also.

[Author]

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