Omeprazole For Dogs

[super7]

Our Labradoodle was taken into Doggy Hospital last weekend for what's turned out to be a Severe bout of Irritable Bowel disease. Upon collecting him 3 days later and paying the £1000 bill for out of hours treatment etc we trotted off home with him and a bag of drugs. One of the drugs prescribed was a 7 day dose of Omeprazole, 30mg, made up of one 10mg and one 20mg tablet.

Each tablet cost 7.50 for the 10mg and £9 for the 20mg tablet. Now I take Omeprazole for reflux and although I get mine on a NHS prescription, but buying them from an independent online pharmacy, the tablets come out at .a 1/10th of the VET price.

We challenged the Vet today on the price, and he said that it wasn't authorised for pets yet, and when it was the price would come done. When asked if it was the same as human omeprazole, they said it was slightly different.

Now looking at the Vet's tablet vs my tablet i can't see a difference, packaging is the same, and the online DOG pharmacies sell the same stuff as humans?

Is the vet pulling the wool over our eyes to sell 7 days worth of Omeprazole for close to £120 or is Doggy Omeprazole so much more different it has to be 10x the human price?

Edited by super7 on Friday 12th July 15:04

Edited by super7 on Friday 12th July 15:10

[tedmus]

One of my dogs had to take it when she was going through treatment for cancer and as far as I'm aware it was exactly the same. I have to take it occasionally and the capsule and box are exactly the same ones that she had. Another of my dogs has to take Gabapentin and again they are the same as the regular tablets. In fact the online pet pharmacy can't list it on the site anymore due to some change in regulations to do with selling human drugs through a pet pharmacy. We have to call them to add it to an order. They also now need the actual copy of the prescription and not just a scanned copy, plus they now have to be shipped by courier rather than Royal Mail.

[RTB]

The active pharmaceutical ingredient will be the same, the only difference could be the excipients used, different companies formulate with slightly different excipients.

Excipients used in the omeprazole my company produce (20mg caps):

SmPC said:

Capsule contents

Disodium phosphate dihydrate,

Hydroxypropylcellulose,

Hypromellose,

Lactose anhydrous,

Magnesium stearate,

Mannitol,

Methacrylic acid – ethyl acrylate copolymer (1:1) dispersion 30 per cent,

Cellulose microcrystalline,

Macrogol (polyethylene glycol 400),

Sodium laurilsulfate,

Capsule shell

Iron oxide E172,

Titanium dioxide E171,

Gelatine,

Magnesium stearate,

Sodium laurilsulfate,

Printing ink (containing shellac, ammonia, potassium hydroxide and black iron oxide E172),

Silica colloidal anhydrous,

Paraffin liquid

Excipients used by a different (generic manufacturer) (20mg caps)

SmPC said:

Capsule contents:

Sugar spheres (contain sucrose and maize starch)

Hypromellose

Sodium lauryl sulfate

Povidone K25

Talc

Magnesium oxide heavy

Methacrylic acid ethyl acrylate copolymer 1:1 (dispersion 30%)

Triethyl citrate

Capsule shell:

Gelatin

Titanium dioxide (E171)

Either way the vet is taking the piss, PPIs cost pence these days, I don't recall what the list price is for generics but it is coppers per cap. Ask for an SmPC (summary of product characteristics) for the drug the vet is giving you and then compare it with the SmPC for your capsules. All the information is publically available. Let me know if you have problems finding the right SmPC.

Edited by RTB on Friday 12th July 15:19

[PositronicRay]

I can't remember the exact drug but when we had something similar. The vet said they could supply an expensive product, but we'd save money with some otc human stuff, just split the tabs in half.

[super7]

RTB said:

The active pharmaceutical ingredient will be the same, the only difference could be the excipients used, different companies formulate with slightly different excipients.

Excipients used in the omeprazole my company produce (20mg caps):

SmPC said:

Capsule contents

Disodium phosphate dihydrate,

Hydroxypropylcellulose,

Hypromellose,

Lactose anhydrous,

Magnesium stearate,

Mannitol,

Methacrylic acid – ethyl acrylate copolymer (1:1) dispersion 30 per cent,

Cellulose microcrystalline,

Macrogol (polyethylene glycol 400),

Sodium laurilsulfate,

Capsule shell

Iron oxide E172,

Titanium dioxide E171,

Gelatine,

Magnesium stearate,

Sodium laurilsulfate,

Printing ink (containing shellac, ammonia, potassium hydroxide and black iron oxide E172),

Silica colloidal anhydrous,

Paraffin liquid

Excipients used by a different (generic manufacturer) (20mg caps)

SmPC said:

Capsule contents:

Sugar spheres (contain sucrose and maize starch)

Hypromellose

Sodium lauryl sulfate

Povidone K25

Talc

Magnesium oxide heavy

Methacrylic acid ethyl acrylate copolymer 1:1 (dispersion 30%)

Triethyl citrate

Capsule shell:

Gelatin

Titanium dioxide (E171)

Either way the vet is taking the piss, PPIs cost pence these days, I don't recall what the list price is for generics but it is coppers per cap. Ask for an SmPC (summary of product characteristics) for the drug the vet is giving you and then compare it with the SmPC for your capsules. All the information is publically available. Let me know if you have problems finding the right SmPC.

Edited by RTB on Friday 12th July 15:19

Wow.... Thanks a lot for that...really appreciated. The packet in the plain white box the Vet supplied them in shows the product is manufactured by Chemo-Iberica S.A. I'll have a look for the SmPC. Thanks for that though. Time for a new Vet methinks....

[bexVN]

I don't really like what your vet has said.

We have to use the cascade system, which means using animal licensed medicines first before moving onto to human licensed medicines (except where there is no animal equivalent licensed drug) If human meds are used the owner should be made aware of this and sign an off license form.

Omeprazole is a useful drug in veterinary medicine and is frequently used. However, as far as I know, it does not yet have a veterinary license so the tablets you had would have been human medication.

When a company decides to make a human drug licensed for animals they invest a lot of money to do so. This nearly ALWAYS increases the cost of the drug but we HAVE to use it over the human licensed equivalent.

I disagree that the cost would come down once licensed for animals. It does sound really expensive but I honestly can't recall how much we charge for them!

Hope that makes sense and I hope he is recovering.

Edited by bexVN on Saturday 13th July 14:41