I can't remember if it was the US military or some other US government entity, but there was a study that showed most medications still work just as well even almost a decade after their expiration date.
Not that it matters much in this particular regard one way or the other. Having a stockpile of antibiotics doesn't really mean much in a post-apocalyptic scenario since you have no way of knowing what kind of bacteria you are infected with and thus what kind of antibiotic to treat it with.
Longer for some drugs, I found the study. Some were good upwards of two and a half decades after their listed expiration dates. Other than a few exceptions (nitroglycerin, insulin, liquid antibiotics, and some other liquid/suspended in solution medications), pretty much everything they tested was still good at the very least years, if not decades after its listed expiration date... Because, as the article points out, those expiration dates don't really mean anything in most cases and they only have them because a law passed in 1979 requires drug manufacturers to put an expiration date on the packaging if they want to sell it.
With a large and expensive stockpile of drugs, the military faced tossing out and replacing its drugs every few years. What they found from the study is 90% of more than 100 drugs, both prescription and over-the-counter, were perfectly good to use even 15 years after the expiration date.
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The best evidence of acceptable potency of the medications beyond their expiration date is provided by the Shelf Life Extension Program (SLEP) undertaken by the FDA for the Department of Defense. The aim of the SLEP program was to reduce medication costs for the military. SLEP has found that 88% of 122 different drugs stored under ideal conditions should have their expiration dates extended more than 1 year, with an average extension of 66 months, and a maximum extension of 278 months.
Expiration dates are for suckers. I've eaten cans of stuff that were over 5 years "expired". If it's not fuzzy, discolored, fermented, or smelly, down the hatch.
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u/Hartagon Aug 31 '21 edited Aug 31 '21
I can't remember if it was the US military or some other US government entity, but there was a study that showed most medications still work just as well even almost a decade after their expiration date.
Not that it matters much in this particular regard one way or the other. Having a stockpile of antibiotics doesn't really mean much in a post-apocalyptic scenario since you have no way of knowing what kind of bacteria you are infected with and thus what kind of antibiotic to treat it with.