When do vicodin pills expire

If a drug has expired, you've got to throw it away, it goes into a landfill, and you have to get a new prescription. This could potentially have a significant impact on cost.

Although the study suggests that expiration dates don't equate to shelf life, Gardner cautions that the findings "don't mean you should go digging through the trash for your expired meds just yet. Chances are, your medicine cabinet contains some pills that are past their expiration date.

You might even have some pain relievers, some cough syrup or some sleeping pills that were purchased back when Richard Nixon was in the White House.

Researchers from those institutions decided to satisfy their curiosity by testing the effectiveness of eight drugs that had been sitting around, unopened, in pharmacies for years after they had supposedly gone bad.

These drugs were not just a few years past their prime, these medications were a full 28 to 40 years past their official expiration dates. The eight drugs contained a total of 15 active ingredients. The tablets and capsules were dissolved and subjected to chemical analysis using a mass spectrometer.

Certain expired medications are at risk of bacterial growth and sub-potent antibiotics can fail to treat infections, leading to more serious illnesses and antibiotic resistance.

Once the expiration date has passed there is no guarantee that the medicine will be safe and effective. If your medicine has expired, do not use it.

Failing to safely dispose of old medications, especially opioids, all too often leads to dangerous drugs ending up in the wrong hands. Finally, expired medicines are also not just a risk to the person they were prescribed for and can injure children and pets if taken by mistake.

For all these reasons, proper disposal of unneeded medicines is essential. At home, though, the situation gets a bit more fuzzy. Supe says. That being said, a research team may have found information to debate expiration dates. Every medicine ages differently. But avoid taking expired antibiotics, supplements, and eye drops. Vogel says, you could get worse or risk your infection developing resistance against the antibiotic. Plus, the fundamental composition of antibiotics changes over time, which can cause issues on its own.

Probably not. With most over-the-counter OTC medication, taking expired drugs will either help you or have no effect—the medicine could no longer be potent. A lot of things can degrade medicine more quickly than normal: light exposure, temperature, and humidity.