Talk:Compounding

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There is an article in the German Wikipedia which is closely related: Eigenherstellung von Arzneimitteln I am not sure whether it is exactly equivalent. If an expert feels that these are exactly equivalent, then this cross reference should be added someplace in the body of the article: [de:Eigenherstellung von Arzneimitteln] Thomas.Hedden (talk) 15:50, 27 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, why do some Americans have the habit of assuming there is no life beyond the borders of their country? In the regulation section it states "pharmacies follow guidelines from U.S. Pharmacopeia." This is not true. US based pharmacies may indeed follow guidelines from the USP but, outside of America it is the EP or the BP or any number of alternative Pharmacopeias which are used.

Similar logic may be applied to "Compounding pharmacists must work within the jurisdiction of the FDA, they are simply exempt from many FDA requirements so long as they are state-compliant and compound pursuant to a valid prescription. However, the FDA registers and inspects the facilities that supply manufacturers with active pharmaceutical ingredients."

I'm sure this was an honest mistake/oversight, but it is all too common on wikipedia. Dammit America - open your eyes and open your minds!

I will sort this out if I get time, if anyone else wants a go - be my guest! —The preceding

Compounded drugs may be referred to galenic or magistral formulations in other countries. The names that refer to the process of making drugs from scratch are as different as their oversight across the globe. Approximately 20 years ago, chemical repackagers in the US began to exploit the profession of pharmacy with the idea of selling chemicals and recipes to pharmacists who could make more money if they sold drugs made from scratch in lieu of approved products. They monitor drugs in development, and actually "bring them to market" before approval for safety and effectiveness. In other countries, this practice is not generally tolerated--pharmacists cannot develop and market novel remedies without submitting to drug regulatory authorities, and most drugs are required to be manufactured according to national standards. Not the case in the US? Hmmm...the new "gold standard" or "double-standard"? ---A Global American —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tara5g (talk • contribs)

All of this is pretty irrelevant to the main page, edit the main page and provide sources if this info is going to be included. WLU 13:02, 22 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually tempted to change the lead paragraph. Technically, compounding is merely the mixing or the active ingredient with a delivery system. The term "compounding pharmacy" is where most patient-specific compounding takes place, but, for instance, all pharmaceutical firms have compounding labs. Once a single formulation is determined to be most applicable, it is scaled up.--Anonymous209.6 (talk) 03:50, 16 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Compounding pharmacies are also used by veterinarians in producing drug mixtures in dosages and flavors suitable for animals. 65.37.0.197 (talk) 15:46, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There might be a valid criticism here, but the prose is argumentative rather than encyclopedic, and is not up to Wikipedia standards. Here is the section removed if someone feels up to reworking it.

The neutrality of this section is disputed. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until conditions to do so are met. (December 2007) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The stance of the FDA has been that each time a drug is compounded it creates a “new drug”. Since that “new drug” has not received FDA approval, the FDA then claims the compound is adulterated and therefore illegal. The illogic of such a position is clarified when one considers the actual practice of medicine in the United States, which uses multiple medications simultaneously (polypharmacy).

While many people take two or more medications daily, very few prescription drugs are studied when combined together. This polypharmacy is impossible to study because of the difficulty and the cost of conducting a full-scale study of each drug combination. For example say there are three hundred drugs available for a doctor to choose from. If a patient is taking an average of six prescription drugs daily, there would be over 10^14 possible drug combinations that individual patient could take. It would be impossible to study that many drug combinations.

Yet the polypharmacy is practiced universally and the FDA accepts it. Using the FDA’s own logic, combining various medications together is illegal if the patient swallows all the drugs after they have been compounded into one capsule… but let that same patient individually take the same multiple prescription drugs and swallow them one at a time… then the FDA has no problem with it.

To begin with, some official FDA statements concerning their position on this would be required to support a claim of this nature. MaxEnt 03:12, 9 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See Sec. 608.400 - Compounding of Drugs for Use in Animals (CPG 7125.40), by US FDA Office of Regulatory Affairs. --Una Smith (talk) 05:17, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A search of "compounding" produces this page, with a link to "compound interest" if that is what you were looking for. There are no pages for "pharmaceutical compounding" or "compounding pharmacy", although this result is first. Considering that "to compound" is a verb with at least three meanings, and pharmaceutical compounding is definitely not the most common usage, it seems that perhaps a title change or disambiguation is necessary. Pamplemousse gnome (talk) 10:08, 19 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This article still has a slant, as shown by passages like this one: "It was during this time that patients and physician became dissatisfied with the “one size fits all” attitude of the large Pharma companies. Physicians searching for drugs to treat their patients led to the reawakening of the ancient art of prescription compounding." -- Skylights76 (talk) 15:04, 29 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is this better? (It sounded very much like someone's advertising plan.) Feel free to kill more of the promotional material. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:43, 30 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I marked this as of questionable relevance as it's not directly related to compounding, and if in the article at all, probably shouldn't seem quite so prominent Persephone12 (talk) 23:15, 17 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, read through this again, and half of this article sounds like a rant against bioidentical hormone replacement. That stuff belongs on that page. I'm changing some of it. Persephone12 (talk) 20:18, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There's papers published for both sides. I'd like to keep debate on the Bioidentical hormone replacement therapy page, not here. Persephone12 (talk) 21:05, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think BHRT is probably a common reason for people to wonder what compounding is, so mentioning that context here is probably appropriate. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:38, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I left it in the bulleted points list. I just don't think it's appropriate to have a paragraph about its merits/problems here. Persephone12 (talk) 00:55, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think that it would be best to merge the history of pharmacy section in this article and that in the main Pharmacy article, to create a new History of pharmacy article, similar to the History of medicine article. Or at least merge the history section in compounding to the main pharmacy article and then link to the main pharmacy article. Persephone12 (talk) 21:41, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This doesn't pertain to merging, but I believe a sentence in the second-to-last paragraph of the history section is incorrect: "Pharmacists were trained to compound the preparations made by the drug companies, but they were unable to do it efficiently on a small scale." Shouldn't it end, "on a large scale"? Toddmatic (talk) 08:35, 16 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a New York Times story, written as background to the NECC case, which lists other incidents of problems with compounding pharmacies. It discusses where the compounding pharmacies get their ingredients from, which seems to be largely China. It also discusses some of the regulatory issues.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/23/health/before-meningitis-outbreak-group-advised-how-to-avoid-fda.html? Before Meningitis Outbreak, Concern at F.D.A. Over Compounders By WALT BOGDANICH and SABRINA TAVERNISE Published: October 22, 2012

--Nbauman (talk) 00:59, 23 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that is a good one, though I have not yet used it. I did add quite a bit of copy today--some of it needs to edited due to occasional poor sentence construction (related to the always present copyright problems). The article still needs a fair amount of work. Gandydancer (talk) 17:17, 23 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a good story from Reuters about how compounding pharmacies became popular to supply specialized formulations and generic drugs that were no longer available because they went off patent, how they had infections and other problems, which led to attempts at regulation, which they defeated by lobbying.

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/772696 Reuters Health Information Insight: How Compounding Pharmacies Rallied Patients to Fight Regulation By Sharon Begley Medscape, Oct 16, 2012

Perhaps someone can use this [1] to improve the article further. 67.243.4.94 (talk) 12:32, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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