OK, new symptoms, new drugs to google.
I mention no names, but:
a. 1 bottle of 200 mg pills - $927.94 from a retail drugstore
b. 1 KG of reagent grade - $201.50 from a chemical manufacturer.
For something described as:
“Provides a source of iron used in cell culture applications. Provides iron in a less toxic form than free iron salts”.
Why would one care about the “toxicity” of the iron source in a culture?
Yes, this is a Chem 105-type named chemical.
How many KG do you suppose end up in human stomachs?
When Hedge Fund Asshole raised the $75/pill to $5000/pill, I noticed somebody selling the generic chemical, in bulk, with the notation:
“This is NOT for MEDICAL USE - if you need this stuff in pill form, please find FDA-approved supplier”.
Maybe the “American Model” of Medical Practice is leaking around the seams?
I already stock common antibiotics. I wonder if there is also a leak around USP-grade chemicals.
I’ll add the required warning:
NOT ALL STUFF IS SAFE!
For instance:
Around colleges with advanced Chemistry labs, you will hear of “200 Proof Un-Denatured Ethanol”.
This is NOT the same stuff as Everclear 200 proof. The reagent stuff is processed with benzene.
The possible presence of benzene cause the world-wide recall of every drop of Perrier (1990).
It really is nasty.
What exactly is the question here?
Are you a pharmacist?
You surely don’t mean that you take antibiotics outside of a doctor’s supervision, right? There’s no way that could backfire…
I don’t really understand the OP’s question, but cell cultures are quite finicky and if you don’t use extremely pure and exactly the right kind of STUFF the cells tend to die. Cell cultures don’t have kidneys, livers, or digestive tracts to alter, filter, and protect them.
I’m guessing your cheap chemical isn’t pharmaceutical grade and is full of potentially toxic substances that you don’t want to be ingesting.
As far as I can tell, he’s asking why a medication that provides 200MG of iron costs $900 for a bottle of pills, while a kilogram of reagent-grade iron costs about $200.
Is that correct, usedtobe? If so, why not just get OTC iron supplement pills?
My question is:
How many KG do you suppose end up in human stomachs?
Is there:
- Massive
- Moderate
- Tiny
- Absolutely No
Diversion of the bulk chemical for human consumption.
As to the “Why not use other Iron sources”.
I have a bottle of cheap Iron Supplements.
They both help form red blood cells AND strain the kidneys.
I have Stage IV Kidney Failure. They haven’t prescribed any of the “good stuff” yet.
I have started taking magnesium pills to combat the muscle cramps (you do not know “Charlie Horse”. Be grateful). It works - no cramps since taking it.
The pills are probably not helping the kidneys, but grade 8 (scale 1-10) pain from muscle cramps pretty much demands treatment.
I have morphine (yes, MD prescribed) - it will NOT handle the pain of muscle cramps.
It is the folks with kidney failure that support the $900+ price.
This is because:
Once you hit Stage V (Kidney Replacement Therapy), Medicare covers* all related expenses.
So jacking up the price of stuff Medicare buys is good business.
-
- The Federal Government, as public policy, decided to cover all the (obscenely high) costs of Kidney Failure. It used Medicare as the way to pay for it. Even if you are 24 and have never heard of Medicare, your Stage V is still covered.
You’re taking one 200MG pill at a time, right? Then I’d expect that about 2/10,000 of kilogram ends up in your stomach.
No, I’m NOT taking a $900+/bottle pill.
I haven’t even checked to see if it is on my Rx insurance list.
I see my Nephrologist on the 22nd. We’'ll go from there.
I need to get another blood test (bmp) to see if the first is a fluke (massively below historical levels).
The other possibility is that the pills have been specially encapsulated or the chemical has been modified in order to allow the human gut to properly absorb the chemical, and simply swallowing the crude chemical means that you will have enriched shit and/or may suffer from severe GI distress.
It is sold as a “potassium binder” - it attaches to serum potassium to form a molecule that is easier for the remaining kidney function to remove.
I went to GoodRx (if you use prescription meds USE GoodRX!) and searched for “Potassium Binder”.
There were 7-8 different drugs - all of which were $900-1000.
This smells like “what market will bear” and nothing like “cost to produce”.
As stated, once someone hits the “Magic” Stage V, all price considerations cease, because “The Government” is paying.
Open Question: Since even lowly little Stage III’s and, even more, Stage IV’s could benefit from a potassium binder, why does nobody go after that market?
Then it occurred to me: Maybe they do. Maybe the generic is re-packaged under the table.
As it is, I now have a frozen dinner I will not use: 38% of RDA potassium. Even the “steak” has a potassium-based preservative (Marie Callendar’s Country-Fried Steak).
Potassium binders don’t work that way. They also, as far as I know, don’t contain iron and are not used in cell culture or anything other than treating patients and are not available in industrial grades. They are usually a complicated molecule that is not absorbed into the body but stays in the gut. They bind to ingested potassium and keep it from being absorbed into the body. There’s also some dispute as to whether they are helpful for patients with kidney disease.
Are you sure you’re not talking about phosphate binders? These also stay in the gut and bind phosphate to prevent it from entering the body. Most of these do not contain iron, but one or two brands do. These are also not used in cell culture and I can’t think of any industrial application and I doubt they are available in industrial grades. They are only used in patients with advanced kidney disease who can’t control their phosphate levels in any other way.
Duh!
Yes, phosphate.
I have no idea why I interchange the two. One shows up on any metabolic panel, the other is a separate blood test.
Here is the GoodRx link I saved:
http://www.goodrx.com/phosphate-binders
Among the unique drugs listed, there are two which seem to be simple, straightforward chemicals; one such drug has a trivial price, the other is priced with the (normal) $900+ drugs.
I didn’t save the chem supply site’s page, but the “for cell culture” quote was from that page. Is that a back-door way of saying “not for pharmaceutical use - wink, wink”?
My question is why does being a Chem 105 type name mean $28 for Calcium Acetate but $935 for Ferric Citrate?
So I googled Ferric Citrate and found the $200/kg price.
If I remember, I’ll try to ask the Nephrologist about Ferric Citrate vs other phosphate binders.
GMP is GMP for a reason. Everything is traceable, starting materials are assayed by the manufacturing company, the paperwork is very thorough, and you’ve always got the FDA looking over your shoulder at your procedures. And formulation matters. It might not be orally active otherwise, it could cause other issues with organ systems, it could be too easy to overdose, or other possible problems.
Now, there could be an actual new innovation in the formulation. Or there could just be rent-seeking by a company that cornered the market or abused the FDA’s program to obtain exclusivity by running clinical trials on old treatments that were never trialed. But reagent grade, cell culture grade, etc. is always, always cheaper because it doesn’t have to go through the amount of paperwork and manpower required for a chemical that can be used in man.
I have some very pleasant memories of drugs formulated under some really interesting conditions.
If you have a FAA-certified (not Experimental) airplane, every piece of that thing may or may not have a paper trail.
I can buy the ANSI hardware and electrical parts from a number of suppliers.
There may well be some obscure processing that goes into the pill but not the cell culture chemical.
I really, really doubt it, but maybe.
This sounds a whole lot like the panic “You don’t know what is in that foreign stuff” coming from pharmaceutical companies in response to Americans buying drugs from foreign sources for pennies on the $100 of USA prices.
I really do not care what the label is - if it performs the same function in the same way, it IS the same.
I got a chuckle at looking at a certain company’s main site and seeing “[redacted drug name] is our best seller!”.
I’ll give you really good odds that the overwhelming bulk of those sales were for use as human drugs. Antibiotics are antibiotics, regardless of the verbiage on the bottle.