Special Medications in CA

With Compounding, Your Doctor Can Be More Innovative

Though FDA (Food & Drug Administration) approval of medications is vitally important to patient safety, creative medical practitioners and pharmacists have often discovered that medications the FDA has approved for certain conditions can be used effectively to treat other conditions. These are called “off-label” uses, and have been documented to be safe. Here again, as your compounding pharmacy, we are able to provide these medications when prescribed by your medical practitioner, when the large drug companies cannot, because they have not gone through the necessary clinical trials to obtain FDA approval.

Why Should I Care About Discontinued Medications?

The vast majority of prescription medications consumed in the world today are commercially produced by large pharmaceutical companies. When name brand drugs go "generic" and when new drugs are developed, some tried-and-true treatments are discontinued. More than 350,000 over-the-counter and prescription medications have been discontinued since the early 1980s. While the reasons are complex, most are economic. Drug shortages and the unavailability of discontinued products may pose serious problems that can result in impaired quality of life.

Compounding Is More About Individual Medications Than High-Volume Efficiency

This is an important area where we can help, as your compounding pharmacy. Because compounding is all about individual medicines for individual patients, and we prepare those medications entirely “by hand,” we can be a reliable source for certain discontinued and unavailable medications, such as Boric acid for yeast infections and quinine sulfate for muscle cramps, in strengths no longer manufactured.

Here are several examples of where we can provide custom medications using ingredients that are not commercially available:

Boric Acid Capsules and Vaginal Suppositories

Also called boracic acid or orthoboric acid, boric acid is an inorganic acid. It acts as a topical, bacteriostatic, and fungistatic agent that penetrates the fungal cell walls and disrupts the cells' membranes. It is useful in treating chronic recurrent vulvovaginal candidiasis (VVC) involving resistant strains such as Candida glabrada, where treatment by oral fluconazole is not effective. With the absence of any commercial boric acid vaginal products, we compound boric acid treatments in both capsules and suppositories. Patients report that the capsules often cause a slight watery discharge, but have found that they are far less messy than suppositories or creams.

• Boric Acid Suppositories 325mg
• Boric Acid Suppositories 600mg
• Boric Acid Capsules 325mg
• Boric Acid Capsules 600mg
• Hydrocodone/Homatropine Capsules

Hyrdocodone/homatropine has been FDA approved as a cough medication for humans. However, it is accepted by veterinarians for use in treating chronic cough in dogs. It is commercially produced only in tablet form (Tussigon), and in only one strength. It has been unavailable at times, and is quite expensive. As an alternative to requiring pet owners to try to administer multiple tablets or fractions of tablets, we can compound many custom strengths in a single capsule.

Quinine Capsules

Above and beyond its traditional use in treating malaria, quinine has had a long history of use in treating restless leg syndrome and muscle cramps. Commercially-produced capsules are available only in a 324mg strength (Qualaquin). They are quite expensive and are not covered by insurance for anything other than malaria. We can compound quinine capsules in many strengths to suit individual patients' needs.

Desiccated Thyroid Capsules

Commercially available Armour thyroid tablets have often been in short supply, and when they become available, the supply has quickly been exhausted. A recent reformulation causes the tablets to crumble when trying to split them. Our supply of Armour thyroid and other hormonal componded medications is more consistently available, and we can compound exact strengths in capsule form to suite each patient. The capsules we produce are clear and contain only active desiccated porcine thyroid, USP and a cellulose filler with no dyes.

Dextromethorphan Capsules

Dextromethorphan an NMDA receptor antagonist, most widely known for its more common use as a liquid cough suppressant. However, when compounded in capsule form, it has been used in conjunction with chronic administration of narcotic analgesics, to reduce the development of tolerance to opiates. We can prepare capsules in a variety of strengths in both immediate- and slow-release formulations.