Over the counter remedies are costly in Europe (€9 for a bottle of cough syrup). And like prescription drugs, they just slap an arbitrary expiration date on the pkg.
My bottle of cough syrup which expired Dec.2019¹ is nearly empty. I took a risk and took swigs from it over the past few days. No issues. Potency was likely reduced but it wasn’t useless - coughing frequency cut down noticeably for a brief period.
I did everything wrong and got away with it. It’s dicey that it’s in liquid form (which ages quicker than meds in solid forms). I also stored it in a room that gets quite warm in the summer. I always drank straight from the bottle.
Research
It’s interesting to note that the US military doesn’t want to stock up on meds and throw them away upon expiry. It would be a huge cost waste impacting public money. So the “Shelf Life Extension Program (SLEP)” was undertaken by the FDA for the Department of Defense. The findings go as far as to test drugs that are 28—40 years past expiry:
- Based on stability data, expiration dates on 88% of the lots were extended beyond their original expiration date for an average of 66 months. Of these, roughly 12% more lots remained stable for at least 4 years after the expiration date. Of these 2652 lots, only 18% were terminated due to failure.
A lot of the advice is what you would expect.. vaccines and biological meds don’t hold up. Anything that’s crumbled and stinky is toast. Perhaps not so obvious: some anti-biotics can become dangerous.
Freezing cough syrup is a bad idea but refrigeration is sensible.
- The Dec.2019 is technically irrelevant the moment the bottle is opened. Manufacturers only guarantee expiration dates on unopened packages.
Pharmacy tech here - what I've been taught matches up with the above. The expiration date is basically the date that the manufacturer can guarantee 9X% of medication is 9X% effective. However there is also an arbitrary maximum of 5 years in the USA IIRC. The only drug that I know of that actively gets dangerous after expiration is tetracycline.
That's not to say that it's fine to use drugs after expiration, though. If you NEED a drug to work - e.g. medication controlling diabetes, blood pressure, etc - using older medication is more likely to not work, which can be dangerous for you.