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Comment by Molitor5901 | Hacker News Reader

Compounded drugs have a difficult line to walk. AFAIK, compounded drugs are those which are made custom to the patient due to allergy, or unavailability. The concern is when a compounding pharmacy makes a drug that already exists on the market, but the pharmacy sells it anyways even though it's identical, or at a lower cost.

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There's also value in individualized dosing. I take tirzepatide, and 5mg is too intense for the first couple days, but 2.5 doesn't last long enough. Ideally I'd take 2.5 every 4 days, instead of 5.0 every 7 days, but that option doesn't exist, but is something that compounding could provide. But I'm not willing to risk the safety-murkiness of compounding, so just stick with the 5.0 and deal with it.

compounding veterinary medication was also common during Covid during medication shortages.

It’s a way to get the same medicine just through different suppliers and circumventing various restrictions/regulations, and then prepared by the compounding pharmacy for ingestion by the patient.

Common use cases are, in animals for example, you might need to put a dog a medication and the supplier may not manufacture the right size dose (or maybe your animal won’t eat pills so the compounding pharmacy reformulates it into a liquid)

My veterinarian recommended sticking with brand name meds for my dog even though I was having trouble due to the size of the pill. Her reasoning was compounded equivalents simply aren’t tested in any medical or academic trials, only brand name formulations are tested in trials, so there’s no guarantee of efficacy since you’re literally taking a formulation of a medication that has gone through zero scientific testing (the isolated ingredients or a similar formula may have trials and testing, but not the exact formula you’re taking)

Which is also why no compounded drug can be FDA approved.

Logically I want to trust compounding pharmacies and I want to believe the efficacY and side effects are equivalent to name brand.

But the fact that my veterinarian cautioned me against compounding my dog’s medicine gave me pause about compounding medicine for myself…

the modern twist is that large health startups like Hims and 23andme are getting into the compounding business and the drug makers arent happy to have the competition.

Hims bugs me a lot with these compounded all in one masculinity drugs. We don’t know the effects of mixing the timing of these drugs in one shot.

Truly I think male pattern baldness drugs are poison and hims is probably a net negative for society at this point.

Which?

The one (and only) time I filled a prescription for propecia a couple decades ago, one of the warnings said something akin to: pregnant women should not even touch a broken propecia capsule due to the risk of birth defect.

After that, I decided to just allow nature to take its course on my hairline.

> The one (and only) time I filled a prescription for propecia a couple decades ago, one of the warnings said something akin to: pregnant women should not even touch a broken propecia capsule due to the risk of birth defect.

Lots of drugs are bad for pregnant and/or nursing women. Propecia is not particularly special in this regard, nor is it especially dangerous compared to all the other drugs out there which are also bad for pregnant women.

"Do not handle" is a warning for topical formulations, just because those are intended to be absorbed transdermally.

I got finesteride from them and used it for a couple months. Stopped taking it and my nuts ached for almost 2 weeks.

Hims strikes me as a giant liability lawsuit just waiting to happen. The things they are selling should never be advertised/sold that recklessly. All they're doing is playing on folks insecurities and potentially giving them serious medical issues down the line due to their willful negligence with prescribing/distribution

At one point I was going to a human compounding pharmacy to get drugs for my cat. I don’t even remember what it was but they put it in fish oil to make it more palatable. Did not work.

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