My elderly mom takes Tylenol Extra strength a few times a week and it gives her great relief. First, should this be completely avoided now with the recall? And, second, if so, what can she substitute it with? Are there are brands of acetomyophin(sp?)? I don’t think it wise that she switch to Advil (ibuprophen) at this point.
Thanks.
As far as I can discern, any generic acetaminophen products which were not made by McNeil should be just fine.
Concur with QtM. Go to any drugstore and look in the pain relievers section, it’ll have bottles of “non-aspirin pain reliever”. Just look at the ingredients to make sure they’re a) acetominophen, and b) the same dosage, and c) don’t include any other goodies like caffeine (unless you want those extras, that is).
I agree Mom shouldn’t switch to Advil/ibuprofen without checking with the doc, as this is a completely different medication and might have an entirely different set of interactions and side effects than she’s used to.
Walgreens and CVS both carry house brands that are chemically equivalent to Tylenol, but not affected by the recall.
Probably every supermarket and pharmacy chain in the country has house brands of acetaminophen.
The house brand is going to be significantly cheaper, too.
The mark-up on brand name Tylenol is unbelievable. I use the house brand because it is literally 10-20% of the price (depending on number in the bottle and form and strength and all the other variatbles).
If you have any doubts, feel free to ask the pharmacist to confirm that the generic you’ve selected is the same as the brand name you are replacing. You just want to be sure that you are taking the correct Extra Strength generic, as opposed to a Fast Acting or other variant. In most cases, this should be pretty obvious from the labels, and the pharmacies around here tend to stock each type of generic immediately adjacent to the identical brand name, but that might not be the case where you shop.
Regarding the recall, it should be made clear that only certain lots of the drug are affected, and it is perfectly safe to continue using Tylenol Extra Strength, or the other variants, if the product you already own is not part of the affected lot list. To check to see if the bottle you have is affected, go to this webpageand enter the alphanumeric lot number as it appears on the box into the applicable field, or compare it to the given lists.
Pharmacies will have already - or soon will - checked their stock and removed it from the shelves for a refund from McNeil if it is part of the affected lots, so in theory, any Tylenol Extra Strength you can buy today should be safe too, but it’s probably best to give them a bit of time to do that.
ETA: of course, new lots can be added to the list as McNeil/J&J expand their quality audit, but generally contaminations can be traced back to a source and products manufactured with that source ingredient/machine/location/etc are the ones recalled, and there isn’t much concern about products not in contact with the source.
Recall for what?
McNeil Consumer Healthcare, the makers of Tylenol and a bunch of other OTC products, have issued a recall for many of their brands because of a musty, unpleasant odor that was (rarely) linked with gastrointestinal problems like vomiting. You look up particular lots of particular medicines here.
Thanks.
I’m surprised that this hasn’t gotten more mention on the news. We usually buy generic drugs, but we did have a bottle of Rolaids that was one of the affected lots, and my husband had taken some of them. They didn’t smell musty to me, but we got rid of them anyway.