Product Labeling

Yesterday I went home right after school with a pretty good migraine headache, and by "pretty good" I mean absolutely debilitating. I think I read somewhere that 25 million Americans get these. Those of you who do will feel my pain, those of you who don't won't understand.

I don't get them very often, but when I do I like to use Excedrin Migraine. It does as good a job as anything else at relieving the symptoms that I experience. However, yesterday all I could find was some "extra strength" Excedrin. I got to looking at the product labeling, though, and realized that it's the same thing! So I'm thinking to myself, "Boy, that's really kind of a cheap trick for the company to sell the same product as two different things," and did a little research.

What I found was interesting. The original Excedrin ("extra strength") was approved by the FDA for treating migraines in 1998. This made it the only over-the-counter migraine medicine. In order to comply with the approval, though, Excedrin must be labeled different when it is marketed and sold for migraine headaches. So if I would have read past the active ingredients, I would have noticed that the indications, warnings, and dosages were different.

Basically it's the same medicine with different instructions. Interesting.