Letrozole prices

Found this on a UK site called Macmillan and thought you might be interested @Vangirl

I've just started on letrozole a month ago on Sun brand  and after reading all the experience of ladies on here, I tried to check exactly what the differences are between the various brands. It is possible to check the detailed ingredients (active (letrozole) and inactive/excipients)  by looking at the 'summary of product characteristics' which is available from the manufacturers and what is held by the licensing authority.

There are a couple of key points;  

1.Cipla and Teva both contain tartrazine, but the others don't. Others use iron oxide yellow for colouring. Cipla also has iron oxide red as well as iron oxide yellow. None of the others do. These two brands are the most different from Femara original. 

2. Sandoz and Femara (Novartis) look identical across all ingredients.

3. Accord and Zentiva are essentially identical to Sandoz.

4. Sun Pharma is almost the same as Sandoz except for Sun contains PEG (water soluble binder )  and povidone ( a water soluble stabiliser) . Both these are very common stable additives, non-toxic,  without any particular SEs 

5.  Actavis is almost the same as Sandoz except it contains polyvinyl alcohol - a water soluble, stable, commonly used non-toxic additive in the coating. 

There are loads of complaints on this site about Cipla .

Also see @Romla's thread on letrozole brands

Thanks @Afraser and @Romla will read and digest this in the morning.

@Vangirl My oncologist said I could try a different brand because they are all formulated a bit differently. She mentioned the lactose intolerance bit as well. She said some of her patients had had luck doing this.

I pay $25.39 for Femara at Chemist Warehouse. It’s worth the extra 10 mins drive to get it there rather than the closest chemist which does not always have my brand in stock either.

Reading with interest!

I have heard the same thing about these drugs. When I first got my tamoxifen I took a photo of it so I would know what brand to get or not to get in the future. 

Reproduced again here in case it helps.

Found this on a UK site called MacMillan about Letrozole brands in UK

I've just started on letrozole a month ago on Sun brand  and after reading all the experience of ladies on here, I tried to check exactly what the differences are between the various brands. It is possible to check the detailed ingredients (active (letrozole) and inactive/excipients)  by looking at the 'summary of product characteristics' which is available from the manufacturers and what is held by the licensing authority.

There are a couple of key points;  

1.Cipla and Teva both contain tartrazine, but the others don't. Others use iron oxide yellow for colouring. Cipla also has iron oxide red as well as iron oxide yellow. None of the others do. These two brands are the most different from Femara original. 

2. Sandoz and Femara (Novartis) look identical across all ingredients.

3. Accord and Zentiva are essentially identical to Sandoz.

4. Sun Pharma is almost the same as Sandoz except for Sun contains PEG (water soluble binder )  and povidone ( a water soluble stabiliser) . Both these are very common stable additives, non-toxic,  without any particular SEs 

5.  Actavis is almost the same as Sandoz except it contains polyvinyl alcohol - a water soluble, stable, commonly used non-toxic additive in the coating. 

Seems that many complaints in UK about Cipla brand and Sandoz brand is popular.

Please remember despite the above on fillers Letrozole whatever the brand had side effects some/all we will probably experience - fillers is not the whole story but may help a little enough to keep us going.

The most I've ever paid was round $36 and that was through the hospital. I get mine from priceline pharmacy. Most of the time it's $26-27 for one of the generics. I don't stick to one particular brand as i figure they all have the same active ingredient (letrozole). They do try to get in the cheaper brands but sometimes they can't. I did stress over the different brand thing at the start but now i don't.