: Splitting pills in half Sometimes a physician will instruct the patient to reduce the dosage of a prescription medication by 50%. Obviously, if the tablet has an enteric coating, or is in a special encapsulation (such as

Vote Up Vote Down   0 Reactions

Login to give Reaction!

Yes, it's true, or at least it might be true for any given pill. In the US, the FDA specifically approves splitting of pills only when the manufacturer plans for it by including it in their drug approval application. By including it in their application the FDA will require the manufacturer to submit evidence that splitting the pills results in equal dosages and equal effectiveness. Without that evidence, you as a consumer have no way of being sure how it will behave. Maybe it will be okay and maybe it won't.

Per the FDA:

FDA has approved drugs where tablet splitting is part of the
manufacturer’s drug application. "If the tablet is approved for
splitting, the information will be provided in the drug’s professional
prescribing information," says Mansoor Khan, Ph.D., director of the
Division of Product Quality Research in FDA's Office of Pharmaceutical
Science.

It's pretty far fetched to think that manufacturers are going to increase profits by telling consumers their pills shouldn't be split. The percentage of patients that would even apply to would be small since doctors don't make a practice of prescribing stronger strengths than patients actually need. Also, pill dosages are sized to meet the majority of patients' needs so any increased profits they actually realized would be trivial and probably not worth the risk of the bad PR that would result from being discovered.