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Comment by mikesabat | Hacker News Reader

I was strongly under the impression that medications with expiration dates do not become dangerous after their expiration, but they may be less effective.

That turns out to be wrong according to the FDA website. https://www.fda.gov/drugs/special-features/dont-be-tempted-u...

Either way, the tylenol in my cabinet expired in 2014 and I'm doing fine.

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> I was strongly under the impression that medications with expiration dates do not become dangerous after their expiration, but they may be less effective.

A few like tetracyclines can become dangerous, apparently that's caused Fanconi syndrome and other kidney problems in a few cases. But that drug is the exception rather than the norm, but since I used to keep doxycycline around for treating Lyme I made sure it was stored in a cool/dry area and never got too far past the expired date.

Aspirin is a pretty easy one to tell if it's past its prime, it'll smell like vinegar as it decays into acetic acid. This falls into the 'loses its potency' category where the thing it decays into isn't harmful.

if my reading of the shelf life extension program paper from 02006 is correct, doxycycline is especially good at surviving past its expiry date. maybe manufacturers are especially conservative about doxycycline expiration dates due to the toxicity risk? the paper didn't mention toxicity risk or safety at all

That article basically says the same - that they're less effective after a time (and if you're trying to save your life with them, less effective could mean deadly)

It does try to suggest that "there could be bacteria growth", but the article hedges and seems like it barely believes that itself. I'm sure some of the syrups could grow bacteria possibly.

“Medication” is very big set of very different things.

When you need to boil down master level chemistry knowledge to one sentence, it is very practical to be conservative and just say “dont use it after exp. It might be dangerous”. (Because, some of them will be dangerous)

yeah, I haven't really thought twice about taking, say, ibuprofen that's 20 years expired. It's good for a laugh, that's about all the critical thought I put into the label.

In my experience, ibuprofen/advil in an unsealed bottle that's over a year past expiration date simply doesn't work well. You may need 2-3 pills of the expired stuff in a situation where 1 pill of unexpired would be sufficient. This makes it in practice hard to pick a dose which is safe but effective.

After enough such annoyances, I have started consistently throwing out expired Ibuprofen.

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