£47 for pack of 28 Pepcid Tablets At Vets!!!

tigs78

Pepcid AC (famotidine 10mg) is no longer available in the UK, it was up until about a year ago but they discontinued it and replaced it with Pepcid Two which is NOT suitable for cats. You can still get famotidine 20mg from the pharmacist but oddly it requires a prescription wheras the 10mg version didn't.

I buy my Pepcid AC from ebay.com (not .co.uk). I got 3 bottles of 60, so 180 tablets, for £11 including delivery...

Hope this helps

mleonard79

Hi Tigs78,

Thanks for your reply. Is it for a cat you buy the pepcid from ebay then? That's an amazing price when you consider what the vet's charging - what did your vet want to charge you for it? The pepcid this cat is on though is Pepcid 20mg so it's different from the 10mg one you seem to get. I'll have a look at what it says on the packaging though when I go round later to give Darwin, the cat, her tablets (My friend's working late and Darwin has to have her tablets at a specific time so I'm the back-up!) Very cute avatar by the way

Regards

Michelle

tigs78

The generic name for Pepcid is famotidine, you can only get the 20mg version in the UK now. My cat has a 1/4 of a 10mg tablet twice daily, when she was first diagnosed I bought the Pepcid from the chemist but like I said they discontinued it a year or so ago which is when I started getting it from the US ebay site.

If your friend does get the Pepcid AC from the US she needs to check she is buying Pepcid AC Maximum Strength (20mg famotidine) or Pepcid AC regular strength (10mg famotidine) NOT the gelcaps, mint or chewable version.

Have a look at this link about famotidine for cats, your friends' cat is on a very high dose as the maximum dose is normally 5mg per day...

http://www.felinecrf.org/treatments.htm#famotidine

Not all US sellers will ship worldwide and sometimes if they do they ask for silly money for the postage, so your friend needs to hunt around for one that ships to the UK for a reasonable price.

tigs78

I've just seen that Darwin has a quarter tablet per day so is not exceeding the maximum recommended dose, your friend could ask the vet if she can have 2.5mg twice daily instead of 5mg in one portion as the effects wear off so it's much more effective twice daily.

Edited to add: Have sent you a PM about a chemist in the UK that can supply it with a prescription...

mleonard79

Hi Tigs - Thanks for the PM and all the information :T . I've Pm'd you back.

Just to let everyone know I checked the box of Pepcid when I went round to my friend's house tonight and it seems to be the human version they are giving her as it talks on the back about the usual adult dose being 1 tablet. I'm not sure that makes any difference over where I could obtain it but you never know. Thanks for all the help.

Regards

Michelle

Clive_Woody

tigs78 wrote:

I've just seen that Darwin has a quarter tablet per day so is not exceeding the maximum recommended dose, your friend could ask the vet if she can have 2.5mg twice daily instead of 5mg in one portion as the effects wear off so it's much more effective twice daily.

Edited to add: Have sent you a PM about a chemist in the UK that can supply it with a prescription...

Our cat is also called Darwin, he is a very sweet little black and white moggie. I thought we had picked an unusual name, but I guess not.

mleonard79

Clive_Woody wrote:

Our cat is also called Darwin, he is a very sweet little black and white moggie. I thought we had picked an unusual name, but I guess not.

Hi Clive - I thought it was quite an unusual name for a cat as well, yours is the only other cat called Darwin I've ever heard of. It's a running theme with my friend as her dog's called Newton!

Regards

Michelle

SilverScooby

Hi Michelle

Like tigs, I've bought Pepcid AC from ebay.com with no problems.

Prior to that I put out a plea on the feline crf yahoo egroup and got a fantastic response from various caring (mainly American) owners of cats with renal failure. One women from the midwest sent me a pack and wouldn't hear of me paying her for them!

The site tigs recommended, Tanya's feline crf site, is a brilliant resource.

Your friends vet is unusual in prescribing Pepcid, which is sad as it's a very useful drug for crf - most stare blankly when one mentions it. They're making a lot on it though. bnf.org lists branded Pepcid 20mg as costing the NHS £13.37 for 28 and the generic is only £8.08 for 28 !

mleonard79

Hi Silverscooby,

Thanks for the input. That's a shame that most vets don't see the benefits of Pepcid. It was initially prescribed for Darwin by specialists at the Glasgow Vet Hospital (which I think is the second largest in the UK and is pretty cutting edge when it comes to veterinary medicine) so perhaps our local vet wouldn't have prescribed it either.

That's so sweet that someone sent you a pack and wouldn't let you pay!

Darwin doesn't get it for CRF - she's had stomach cancer and developed a very large ulcer due to this so it is to help with that and is really more preventative than anything I think.

What you say about the NHS buying it for between £8 - £13 is just shocking. I'm assuming a vets could buy it in at a similar price then. They told my friend that they bought it in at £40 and then with their dispense fee, VAT and a very 'small' mark-up it came to £47 - I think there's a few porkies in there. My friend actually thinks it might be worth informing trading standards due to this blatantly huge mark-up and she's going to go into Boots tomorrow to see what they sell it at out of interest. Thanks again for the info.

Regards

Michelle

mleonard79

I also forgot to say a very big thanks to Tigs78 :T

She very kindly put me in touch with a pharmacist in the UK she'd bought Pepcid off before and she said she could sell 28 tablets to me for £8 delivered so long as we sent in a prescription for them!!! So it looks like we have a result :beer:

As my friend has already opened this packet and it'll last her a few months she doesn't need any more just now but when she does she won't be getting it from the local vets again! Thanks for all the help.

Regards

Michelle