How many prescription drugs are there?  I need to document the source
of this answer.  Does the information say how may generic, or how many
brand names.

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Request for Question Clarification by alienintelligence-ga on 06 Apr 2005 16:58 PDT

Hi merlin007,

How precise and timely of a number 
do you need?

The reason I ask, I happen to have a 
friend in the pharmaceutical business
and know for a fact that dozens of
new drugs come on the market each year,
sometimes easily, 1 to 2 a week.

So, can the number be relative lets
say up to the end of 2004? I can't 
imagine any formal listing of pharms 
would be more up to date than that.
Even the JAMA wouldn't necessarily
delineate all new drugs for a given
period, unless they are new or unique.

Generic vs. brand name shouldn't be a
problem, but there could be a 0.5%
error margin due to naming conventions.

thanks,
-AI

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Clarification of Question by merlin007-ga on 09 Apr 2005 04:19 PDT

Thank you.  Up to 2004 will be fine and your margin of error is more
than acceptable.  I am a public educator who gives presentations and
would like to
be able to say something to the effect that:

"Today patients and their doctors have more than ..... number of
generic drugs to chose from in more than ....... brand name products."

That would be ideal.... how close can you get to this?

Thanks again in advance.

The last information available from the FDA was 48,044 separate NDC
codes. This covers OTC meds as well as prescription medications.
However, different NDC numbers are given out to different container
sizes -- if something comes in a bottle of 30, 100, and 500, that's
three different NDC numbers for one drug from one manufacturer.

There are multiple manufacturers for most generic drugs, each of whom
have different NDC numbers for what is essentially the same drug.
Drugs that come in multiple dosage forms (doxycycline, for example,
comes in tablet and capsule form) only complicates the problem. So if
there are multiple manufacturers both making tablets and capsules
offering 3 or 4 different package sizes, all of a sudden you've got
many many different NDC numbers for the same doxycycline hyclate.

The question is difficult to answer because does doxycycline hyclate
count as one drug, or 50?