Monthly Archives: October 2006

Opening the new bottle of levothyroxine this morning to check its contents sent me into panic.

I should have checked as soon as we got home from the grocery store…or better yet standing in line at the pharmacy at said grocery store. I definitely should have checked before taking the last pill in the old bottle.

These pills looked different. First of all, they were not tan and oval like the tablet I had just swallowed an hour earlier. And notice, they have 88 imprinted on one side of the tablet to indicate the 88 mcg of levothyroxine it contains.

Very different – this tablet was green and round. What’s with the JSP 561 label on the tablet? Is that somebody’s random license plate number or did I get the wrong prescription?

I checked the label, same prescription. But wait…the manufacturer listed is Lannett, not Sandoz like it has been for the past year and a half I have been taking the generic Synthroid. I paged through the handy Physician’s Desk Reference my father-in-law gave me a couple years ago. No Sandoz or Lannett 88 mcg levothyroxine pictured. Time to investigate on the ‘net. Sure enough, I found a picture of Lannett’s 88 mcg levothyroxine without much trouble and it is exactly what is in my prescription bottle.

So, maybe the pharmacy changed which generic Synthroid manufacturer it uses, but shouldn’t they tell you that when picking up the prescription?

I was stable on Sandoz levothyroxine. Will Lannett’s formula be slightly different and knock me out of stability? I have heard of that happening to other hypothyroid patients who have a generic manufacturer switcharoo. Thank goodness for my endocrinologist telling me that I don’t NEED a TSH check in Dec/Jan when I see him next, but I can get one when I go in for the A1C bloodwork if I am finding myself feeling “off”.