Claritin has never worked in the slightest for me despite trying it a few times. I googled re Claritin’s effectiveness and ran across this older NYT article. It’s quite fascinating, Claritin is kind of (IMO) a borderline scam. In OTC strengths it’s effective for only about 40%-50% of the people who use it.
How is that a scam? If you were in the group it worked for, you’d be happy and keep using it. That’s who it’s for, not you.
OP doesn’t want to look at Glucosamine and Chondroitin - even the FDA says it doesn’t work.
It does for some.
I strongly prefer the opiates - the relief from GnC for me was marginal - but it was real.
It’s also only really effective at preventing an allergic episode, not ending one (which the article addresses).
I buy generic loratidine and use it daily during my worst allergy season, or if I know I will be exposed to possible triggers. Does it always help? No - but it doesn’t make me drowsy, either, which is important when I drive, or when I used to fly (the FAA allows me to take loratidine at the recommended dose and still fly an airplane). For a real reaction, though, I go back to diphenhydramine a.k.a. Benadryl which works much more effectively but which can also knock me out. Loratidine’s not perfect, far from it, but in my experience it heads off reactions often enough to be worth is. If it’s a placebo effect it’s still worth the the roughly $1.25 it costs for a month’s supply and considerably less pricey than most snake oil. That’s cheaper than a lot of multi-vitamins.
I guess what I’m saying is that I know the drug’s limitations and at generic prices I am willing to deal with the trade-offs but it’s been an open secret for years among the allergic that it’s not as effective as the first generation anti-histamines and doesn’t work for everyone. I also wish there was more general knowledge about this sort of thing.
I’ve also been known to take pseudoephedrine, which is the opposite of sedating for most people, but again there are downsides to that one (no longer important but it once was: the FAA doesn’t allow you take it if you’re doing the flying. Not because it’s sedating, but because in about 20% of people it increases chances of vertigo. On the ground that’s inconvenient. In the air it can be deadly) among them increased blood pressure, irritability, and difficulty in getting or staying asleep.
Basically, allergies suck and there are no medications that are 100% effective and none without side effects. Those nasal steroids the article talks about? Side effects include nosebleeds, headaches, increased risks of infections in the nasal area, and even nasal septum perforation. Oh, yeah, fun times if you’re one of the unlucky ones.
Out of curiosity, what percentage of people do you think most major drugs are effective for?
Edit: That’s an open question, by the way. I know the answer (or at least an answer) but I wonder what people’s *expectations *are.
Works like a charm for me with no side effects and it’s cheap. Love the stuff.
Me too. Not only for my allergies, but (off label) it does a fantastic job of reducing my joint and bone pain. Been working for more than a year now.
A good question. If this were a bar bet I’d guess that to be commercially successful pharma you would want at least 70%-80% effectiveness response rates. For something to be so huge and is ineffective for 50% of users yet is still prescribed and recommended as if it’s great stuff or everyone is puzzling to me. I don’t recall a doctor every saying that a drug they prescribed works only half the time.
I guess I’m in the 40-50% of people it works for. I’m terribly allergic to cats, but I take some OTC Claritan before I go visit my cat-loving brother and sister-in-law, and I can enjoy my time there without wheezing like a kazoo and breaking out in hives on my neck. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a miracle drug.
I have no idea what the benchmark is, but a drug that works half the time and seems pretty free of awful side effects sounds like a pretty good deal to me.
Way too high.
most major drugs are effective in only 25 to 60 percent of patients
I know, I agree with you. It seems like it should be much higher if we’re spending all this time and money doing studies and approving stuff as “effective,” doesn’t it?
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMra032424
Why is there Allegra and Zyrtec, too? And probably other non-OTC daily allergy relief medicines that I don’t know about.
Would you be surprised to learn that there are 6 different PPI (proton pump inhibitors) medications for acid reflux that all “do the same thing” but they don’t all work the same for all people? I took 3 different ones before one worked for me, and it’s different than the one my parents take.
Allergy meds are the same way.
I never found Loratadine (Claratin) particularly effective. However if it works for some that is great.
Unfortunately I find he stuff with ephedrine is the only helpful stuff (marketed here as Claratyne D) but it is becoming more difficult to obtain.
I went from having occasional severe asthma attacks(one of which put me in the ER) to none after starting to take a 10mg generic Claritin daily.
Loratadine is as far as I am concerned one of the miracles of modern pharmaceuticals.
I just read it and realized that article was written in 2001, the situation is totally different now in 2014 as loratadine went generic. The last supply of loratadine I purchased was 400 10mg tablets for the price of $14.
You can have my generic loratadine when you pry it from my cold, snot-covered hands.
The effect is dramatic and nearly instantaneous for me. I just wish it lasted longer; the stuff seems to have a very short lifetime in my body despite supposedly being effective for 24 hours.
Back when the “non-drowsy” antihistamines were new, expensive, and prescription-only, I showed a similar article to someone whose child wasn’t getting much help from Claratin. Now that many generics are cheap, OTC products – damn I love loratadine!
It’s SO cheap and works for me so well that it’s a miracle drug. The days when I’d spend hours with mucus pouring out my nose while feeling like a stunned sloth are over.
Even if it only worked for ten percent of people, it would still be invaluable for them. Should a product not be available that makes such a difference in their lives just because it doesn’t work for someone else? Hopefully there will eventually be a solution for every person made miserable by allergies, but insisting it ought to be the SAME solution for everyone or there is something wrong is ridiculous.
If you buy a pack of Claritin, take a dose, and it doesn’t work for you, I’d be surprised if you could not return the remainder to the store for a refund.
I’ve been using the generic cetirizine (zyrtec) and it works well, but you pretty much have to take these before you’re exposed to allergens. If you wait until symptoms actually flare up it’s too late.
Is this why aspirin and some other analgesics do nothing for me?
Acetaminophen seems to work, but that’s usually not good on the kidneys for the ailment I’m treating.
As some Dopers may recall, I’m an avid daily walker. But if I skip a couple of days, I always break out into cholinergic uticaria. Sometimes my whole body is taken over by this horrible burning itch. It’s so bad that I used to be obsessed about walking every day. (My hypothesis is that without a daily work-out, my leg blood vessels constrict, and that the hives are triggered when they re-dialate.)
But loratadine has been a life-saver. I take a pill an hour before I’m out the door, and I’ll only experience mild itchiness. If I take two, I experience NO itchiness.
My sis, the cat owner, wouldn’t have her current fiance–who is allergic to cats-- if it weren’t for this wonder drug.
It doesn’t do shit if you’re already in a bad situation, though. You’ve got to take it before you’re exposed to the allegeren.