I just tried to refill my prescription for Gleevec but my insurance company wants to give me the generic version. Does anyone have any experience with the generic version, is it as good as Gleevec. Will it have different side effects?
Thanks in advance.
Hi,
I think we are certainly going to see insurance firms insist on generic imatinib from now on when imatinib is prescribed. It's clearly a decent cost saving for them.
In theory, there ought to be absolutely no difference between a generic version of imatinib and Glivec / Gleevec branded imatinib. They will be "bioequivelant". There are situations where a branded drug has some different properties to generic ones (I'm thinking of some epilepsy drugs) but these are very few and far between. There is no reason to think generic imatinib won't be every bit as good as the branded version.
The thing is, it has only very recently come off patent - and not yet in every country - so you won't find many people with much experience of it.
Over time, we'll start to see many more posts here about generic imatinib and we'll start to build up a great collective knowledge bank on it. But right now, from a patient perspective, we don't know a great deal more about a specific generics. I assume you'll get the Sun Pharma one if you are in the USA. It was only released a couple of weeks ago.
If it were me taking generic imatinib, I would be careful to log any changes in myself over the next while when taking it. Are my side effects the same as before? Worse ... better? And then I'd be quick to talk to my doctor about any changes.
But to answer you're most important question: will generic imiatinib be as good as Glivec / Gleevec. The answer very much ought to be YES. But keep an eye on yourself.
David.
