My pwp recently had a problem getting Brand Sinemet. The Pharmacy was finally able to get it for her, but she was told that they had gotten as much as the "facility"had and gave it to her. She is now concerned that this will not be available to her when she needs to have the prescription renewed. She has tried the generic in the past, and it did not "work"nearly so well as the Brand. I am just wondering if any of you have had the same experience; or, is this just a temporary problem with getting Brand Sinemet? I can remember a very long time ago that this problem existed...read it here on the forum, but I thought that the situation had been remedied. I'd appreciate any feedback you may be able to provide to me...thank you...

Virginia Therese

Virginia,
I have been following the artificially created Sinemet shortage since the year 2009. And yet I cannot answer your question. The crude dishonesty of this game they are playing with sinemet (and by "they" I mean Merck worldwide, plus the hundreds of websites that suddenly showed up on the internet, selling sinemet, plus the impossibility of finding out the slighest shred of information about it, plus Health Departments and many PD organisations remaining studiously silent, around the world)
It becomes very depressing to investigate, because you begin to have a dreadful personal experience of what we really are in the eyes of the lawyers who run Pharma (scientists no longer run Pharma, lawyers representing fast money zeroed in on the 40$% profit margins,)

Long gone are the days when the founder of Merck - a scientist - stated this to every company employee and every investor in his company:

“We try never to forget that medicine is for the people. It's not for the profits. The profits will follow, and if we have remembered that, they have never failed to appear.”
- George W. Merck, 1950

Virginia, I would suggest you make about 20 aggressive calls to the medical industry, your doctors, pharmacies, and DEMAND answers,
We all can accept that something can go wrong or demand can exceed supply. We can suffer more until the production catches up. But this is not a production problem; we are being lied to, and our interests were most definitely not taken into consideration in the decision taken at Merck to deliberately shut down one line of production of sinemet three years before opening a new one.
They have no shame.

I suggest that you call the NPF or the PD org you have connections with - and take a look at NPF's page below. If anyone else is experiencing difficulty, ditto.

http://www.parkinson.org/About-Us/Pr...-Shortage-of-S

I believe that Sinemet is to be released in a different formulation (same ingredient different style tablet and packaging) in the US this year. The orgs should have more info on this.

Were the tablets your pwp got this time the same as before?

Keep us posted.

Lindy

Thank you, Bob and Lindylanka for responding to my question related to the availability of Brand Sinemet...much appreciated...

Bob: Your response was extremely interesting, and I must say, aggravating about Pharma. Certainly, I am not a fan of Pharma, but the information that you provided really enraged me. How sad that MERCK does NOT abide by its founder's stated policy! Thank you, again, Bob for your response.

Virginia


Lindylanka: Thank you, too, for your response to my question...and thank you for your suggestion that I contact NPF. You asked if the tablets my pwp were the same this time as before. No, they were NOT! Doreen has been taking Brand Sinemet for 13 years with excellent results...actually being able to decrease the dosage over the years. I read the NPF page that you recommended and noted 2 telephone numbers that I will call...MERCK'S number and NPF. We contribute regularly to NPF so that now I will be looking for the organization to reciprocate with some kind of help from them.

Thank you, again, for your response.

Virginia

VT, we went through this as well, this past spring. Our refill was partly refilled, and I was actually told it was no longer going to even be made! We, too, cannot take the generic as it does nothing for us. The pharmacist's suggestion was to contact every pharmacy in my area and get whatever inventory they had still on the shelf. We had to transfer the script to do that, but at least I got it filled, mostly....

A few weeks before those pills were going to run out, I contacted the pharmacy where we had the script transferred and although they could not givs us all the pills we needed, oddly, did have some. Go figure, it was too complicated to explain why they originally did not give me ALL of my remaining script but what do you do? I then called Costco where we originally fill stuff and they had the name brand in stock, and filled our next refill completely, no problem.

BUT, but but...just be aware that the new sinemet pills ARE different! The older ones we took were oval, and yellow, easy to tell apart from other pills. The new "improved" (HA) sinemet pills are a white circle, and about the same size as our azilect and mirapex! Why they did that I have no idea. Oh, and the new pills are not scored like the old ones were, so it is damn near impossible to split them in half without powder flying everywhere and the dosage getting messed up, it's not accurate at all but we ended up getting a pill splitter which works....kinda.

I would call every pharmacy in your area and if you have a Costco, try there. Also the other suggestions made here are good, and hopefully this will be resolved quickly. This is such a scary thing, to not be able to get pills you have to have, that I never even told my husband about the shortage because I knew he would panic and stress and his symptoms would go through the roof. Thank heavens it got resolved before I had to, such a huge blessing for us. Good luck to you as well.

Wonder if this new style pill will be rolled out across the world. Worrying for those of us who regularly split pills....... At the moment we are getting the usual yellow ones here in Europe......

Lindy

This is to thank "lurkingforacure"for your response to my post. I've not been able to return here for a few days, now, but I did want to thank you for your response to my question just as I thanked the others who responded. As you mentioned...the "new design"of the tablet and the color can be a problem...it can easily be confused with the Mirapex which is certainly not a good thing...and then, too, the fact that it cannot be scored definitely is a factor...never quite sure that you're getting the correct amount, etc. The pill "breaker"does help, but unless you place it exactly, it can result in an "irregular cut"...or, it can break. I guess, though, that we should be relieved to know that the Brand Sinemet is still available. Thank you for responding, LFAC...appreciate it very much.

coca Cola and Pepsi-Cola are different, but properly made , stereospecific enantiomeric excesses of>99% L- dopa, in tablet form, with the specific amount of pure Carbidopa, only differs from "the brand name in the composition of binders coloring agents if used or shape of the tablet. So (even though i too, paradoxically, did notice a definate difference in the generic i was given and the "brand name";if they are made to good manufacturing procedures, there is no reason in the world why somebody like mike fox can't take a couple of million bucks, hire a few seasoned pharmaceutical chemists, and start helping us all in a tangible way by ensuring that as long as they haven't found anything to stop the beast in its tracks, that at least us little guys out here, don't have to pay the ridicuous profit to production rate of big pharma. This is the kind of thing that saps the life out of those without prescription benefits (and even those that have high co-payments. WE, yes you and i COULD do something to help ourselves. We shouldn't have to pay more than $10 for a months supply of Levodopa and Carbidopa mixtures, then, because we often need other drugs, sometimes many drugs to adequately control our symptoms, then, to add insult to degradation, we must keep on spending tons o muny out of our often meagre resources that few have, for the rest of our lives.
NO SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, but ample nearly free, off patent drugs.