In fact, drugs can be copied, so are generic drugs the same as the original drugs? Let's have a look.
There are many ways to classify drugs, which can be generally divided into: imported drugs, domestic drugs, original drugs and generic drugs.
Imported drugs: Drugs produced outside Chinese mainland, imported from foreign countries, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, and registered for sale in the Mainland are called imported drugs.
Domestic drugs: drugs developed and produced by pharmaceutical enterprises in Chinese mainland.
Original drug: refers to the original drug that has been approved for marketing after screening thousands of compounds and strict clinical trials. It takes about 15 years of research and development time and hundreds of millions of funds. At present, only large multinational pharmaceutical companies have the ability to develop.
Generic drug: refers to the imitation that is the same as the brand name drug in terms of dosage, safety and efficacy, quality, function and indications.
Generally speaking, drugs with huge investment and years of research and development are called original drugs; General generic drugs are produced by generic technology, with less investment and quick listing.
The original research drugs are mainly concentrated in wholly foreign-owned or Sino-foreign joint venture pharmaceutical enterprises; There are generic drugs at home and abroad. China mainly produces generic drugs, and many enterprises will produce drugs with the same composition repeatedly. Therefore, discussing the difference between domestic drugs and imported drugs refers to the difference between original drugs and generic drugs to a large extent.
Is the original drug better than the generic drug?
Because our country attaches importance to patents, foreign drugs will have a patent protection period of 20 years after they are allowed to enter China, and domestic pharmaceutical companies can copy them after the protection period.
The marketing of the original drug needs to go through many processes, including basic experiments, toxicological experiments and four-phase clinical trials. Therefore, the efficacy and safety of the original drugs have been fully proved, and many original drugs have played a breakthrough role in the treatment of diseases, so they have been recognized by many clinicians.
Generic drugs are relatively simple. After the patent period, it can be produced with the approval of the state. As long as the molecular structure of the therapeutic chemicals is the same, they are more or less different in pharmaceutical excipients, cracking and conversion rate.
However, there are also great differences between generic drugs. Some generic drugs are even comparable to the original drugs in efficacy, but overall, the original drugs are more accurate than generic drugs.
Are original drugs and imported drugs the same thing?
Seeing this, some people may think that many original drugs are multinational pharmaceutical companies, so will imported drugs be good?
The original drug is not equal to the imported drug. Imported drugs may also be fake drugs, which are harmful to health. In fact, this point has been described clearly in the movie "Strong Desire for Survival". Even regular brand drugs, if purchased from informal channels, will greatly increase the risk of expiration and counterfeiting.
Therefore, both original research and generic drugs must be purchased in regular hospitals and pharmacies, and must not be purchased from private hands or Haitao drugs. The safety cannot be guaranteed.