Can a change in brands of thyroxine make your TSH go up or not

[TinaTSpoon]

Daughter has got congenital Hypo thyroidism we have had her brand changed and it has gone up the same happened 18 months ago

[helvella Administrator]

Tina,

Yes - such changes can and do affect TSH (and the thyroid hormone levels). And with another change of brand, the levels could go the other way.

Have a look at a blog posted on this very site:

thyroiduk.healthunlocked.co...

And then I suggest you have a look at this paper:

endo-society.org/advocacy/p...

Although from the US, what is says is fundamentally true everywhere.

If possible, I would ask your pharmacy to keep to a single 'brand' - though it depends on their goodwill.

All the best

Rod

<b>Updated on Aug 16 2010 8:49PM:</b> Just remembered this article (freely accessible and quite recent - 2008/9):

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...

If you can get through that, it clearly shows that the allowed variation in potency can result in TSH outside the target range. Let alone where the potency is out of range for some reason or other.

[Chippysue]

We all know that it is important to have a good relationship with our GP's but I think that it is equally important to have a good relationship with a good pharmacist too. GP's will say that they are unable to state the make of levo on the prescription but when I was taking it I asked the Pharmacist to ensure that each dose was Eltroxin and she obliged.

There are going to be some Pharmacists that will not agree with this but it would not be any trouble for them to put a note on the system to always supply the same make for each dose.

[TinaTSpoon in reply to Chippysue]

Yes that is part of the problem at moment with a big chemist that are not helpful but will be moving asap. Also spoke endo nurse today and she is very interested in this so at least we have help there.

[fiona]

I never got as far as taking a certain prescription of Levothyroxine, for long enough to know if it would have affected the blood tests. This was because after only a day or two, I felt like I had omitted the doses all week! You will appreciate that it was a bad experience.

Not wanting to risk that again, I stick with the same make from the same pharmacy and request Actavis manufacturer. Sometimes I wonder if most are similar, but I certainly had a very bad experience and these were loose tablets in a bottle.

I also filled in the yellow card to share the bad experience.

So it wouldn't surprise me if taken for long enough if you could find that a certain one isn't as good and the blood results are not as good as a result.

Fiona.