Am J Psychiatry 1976; 133:1377-1381
Copyright © 1976 by American Psychiatric Association
Generic and trade-name antipsychotic drugs: clinical equivalence
CP Chien, R Labrie, CG Park, JO Cole and WM Werner
The clinical inequivalence of generic versus trade-name drugs has been
reported for nonpsychiatric drugs but rarely for psychotropic drugs. Recent
expiration of patents on some psychotropic drugs has made the evaluation of
the clinical equivalence of generic versus trade-name drugs a matter of
interest from methodological, sociopolitical, and economic aspects. The
authors discuss these points, with emphasis on methodology, in their report
of a double-blind study of the efficacy of chlorpromazine and Thorazine in
the treatment of 54 acute schizophrenic patients. An analysis designed to
infer the maximum possible advantage of Thorazine over generic
chlorpromazine indicated that differences between the two were clinically
insignificant.
