The t4s -- Levothyroxine

November 17, 2002

In a message dated 11/17/2002 5:50:03 PM Eastern Standard Time,

> I am interested in your experience, and others' too, with synthroid and it

> various generics. Is synthroid preferable to the genetics or vice-versa?

> Are their some generics that people like better than others? Has any heard

> of or noticed differences between Levoxyl and Levothyroid or any of the

> other generics?

>

You are asking about the various brands of T4. The general name for T4

replacement if levothyroxine. If you get the generic that's what it's

called. Levoxyl, Synthroid and Levothroid are brand names. In a large study

which was initially funded by the manufacturer of Synthroid (the most popular

brand of replacement at that time) it was shown that all were bioequivalent.

That means none were superior to the others. (Boy! Did that make the

manufacturer of Synthroid mad! ...but that's another story?)

HOWEVER, all also had problems with consistency of dosage. In other words,

you might be taking .125, but different lots would have different strengths.

This was presumably due to lack of testing of all batches.

There are often recalls of thyroid replacement because of this problem.

In my opinion, this is still a major problem. A lot of time, people don't

know what is going wrong and think they are having side effects of Graves'

when it may actually be because their T4 replacement is either weaker or

stronger than the last batch, even though marked the same (e.g., .125).

THEN, they found out that a certain manufacturer was charging more than they

should have been, and bad mouthing the competition and the natural T3/T4

combo replacements... ah, but that's much more information than you asked for.

Red

***************************************************************************

Courage doesn't always shout. Sometimes it is the quiet voice at the end of

the day that says, " I will try again tomorrow. "

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