The FastDay Forum

I have also managed to get T3 again for the last month. I take 20mcg a day plus 100 mcg of T4. The cost of the liothyronine to the NHS is £40. TML kindly sent me some from greece - they cost her 1.20 euros! Someone somewhere is making money from the NHS!
However if you look at my progress tracker you will see that there was a slight flattening of the line during the month I was taking the Greek ones so all things may not be equal. ( or I mave have been eating and drinking more that month )

Lil, that is interesting. Could it be that the Greek ones are less -how should I phrase it?- strong? Can that happen?

TML13 wrote: Lil, that is interesting. Could it be that the Greek ones are less -how should I phrase it?- strong? Can that happen?

Differences in formulations are known to affect how drugs are absorbed into the body, so it is possible that the same dose tablets can be more/less effective. Whether this is the case here we can't tell unless you repeat the experiment!

If you are ever desperate again, at a push you can get the raw thyroid extract from ebay of all places. It has the T4 and T3 in it. Maybe not the exact balance you need but it could tide you over.

I'm resurrecting this topic as it seems that liothyronine is one of the drugs the maverick pharmacists have got their grips on. I note that in 2013 the price of a 28 day pack was £40 ( 1.20 euros in Greece!) which seemed steep - it is now £248 and there is talk of making it unavailable on the NHS because of the cost. I am so dismayed at reading this as it really turned my life around. If that happens it would seem that my options would be to pay for it privately - eating into my children's inheritance - or buy it on line and put myself at the mercy of other mavericks maybe.Stopping taking it is not an option. I cannot see how the production costs of a drug that has been around for years could suddenly have escalated to such a degree.

@Lil...

Sigh...this is an ongoing problem. Big Pharma has been looking for even more ways to increase their profits (aka "stick it to the consumers") and have recently settled on dramatic increases to established drugs that were reasonably priced. Not sure what's happening right now, but am aware that some governmental agencies here in the States have taken exception to this practice and are going after the pharma guys. Not that this helps you right now...