Just got refills. Epivir is now generic??? \u00a0Refill is simply labeled Lamivudine Tablets by Aurobindo Pharma USA, Inc …but made in India.\u00a0 Should I be concerned about that???
\nJohn<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I told John (not his real name) not to be concerned — he is merely substituting the generic for the branded version, not switching from a fixed-dose combination or from a different drug (that drug being emtricitabine, or FTC).<\/p>\n
But generic lamivudine for HIV treatment is a watershed moment nonetheless, since it’s really the first time there’s a generic antiretroviral that we might actually consider prescribing. (Zidovudine and didanosine have been generic for years.)<\/p>\n It will be fascinating to see how this plays out, both here in the US and in other developed countries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An e-mail from a patient last week: Just got refills. Epivir is now generic??? \u00a0Refill is simply labeled Lamivudine Tablets by Aurobindo Pharma USA, Inc …but made in India.\u00a0 Should I be concerned about that??? John I told John (not his real name) not to be concerned — he is merely substituting the generic for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5,8],"tags":[322,383,552],"class_list":["post-2380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hiv","category-infectious-diseases","category-patient-care","tag-emtricitabine","tag-generic-drugs","tag-lamivudine"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2380\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2012\/01\/10688424_blog1.jpg\" "\\"10688424_blog\\"")
<\/a>With all the hoo-ha about generic atorvastatin, this one is much more under the radar. And the process to approval has not been smooth, as I wrote about here<\/a> and here<\/a>.<\/p>\n