A girl I live with has allergies that cause her a lot of nasal congestion. She’s tried lots of over-the-counter medications, and long ago settled on Actifed and its store-brand analogs as the most effective pill for her. The active ingredients are pseudoephedrine and triprolodine.
Now that pseudoephedrine has become such a problem (it is a main ingredient in homemade meth), many OTC medications have been reformulating with other ingredients. I don’t think Actifed is still using its original formula.
Other pills have stuck with their formula and (at least here in WA) have been put behind the pharmacy counter, are limited to 1 package purchased at a time, and they track purchasers by taking their info and signatures.
Over the last year, the drugs with triprolodine have started to completely disappear. Last time we went looking for my housemate’s allergy pills, there was only one store that seems to still carry that formulation (the store’s name ends in -green’s).
I’d understand if all pseudoephedrine drugs were disappearing and this one was going with them, but there’s plenty of stuff still available all over that have pseudoephedrine as their only active ingredient. So it is the triprolodine that’s causing the fadeaway. I couldn’t find anything in a google to tell me why.
Does anyone know if there’s something about triprolodine that is making it disappear?
Do you mean triprolidine? It’s still available, and places on the net will be willing to sell it to folks in exchange for money.
My guess as to its reduced visibility? The fact that less sedating antihistamines like Claritin, Allegra, and Zyrtec are now available OTC and in generics for lower prices probably has driven down the demand.
Thanks for the correction. I should know to double-check such things when posting.
Your explanation may be the reason, but I’m not happy about it. The three alternatives you mention are at least 3 times the price, and for at least this one allergy sufferer (my housemate), they don’t work as well. She doesn’t get drowsy with it, either (maybe that’s due to her untreated ADD).
I don’t suppose anyone in the OTC drug industry is reading and is able to comment?
Actifed is (was?) also my OTC allergy remedy of choice.
The idea was to try to balance the stimulant effect of the Pseudoephederine against the “downer” effect of the triprolidine, yeilding something that didn’t make average folk drowsy.
It may be that if a substitute for the pseudoephederine is used then thetriprolidine causes excessive drowsiness.
If I can find something else that works, I won’t miss it too much, as if I needed for more than a day or two it made me grumpy. (Kevbabe recognized the symptom without knowing I was on the allergy pills)