Many people have been taking medications with little to no knowledge on the inactive ingredients. Giovanni Traverso is the senior author of a group of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and Brigham and Women’s hospital in Boston, MA. He began researching this topic when one of his patients had trouble tolerating an inactive ingredient in one of his prescribed medications. The patient reported feeling sick from a prescribed acid suppressant which contained a wheat derivative. It turns out his patient had an intolerance to gluten, found in the wheat derivative.
There are more than 93% of medications containing possible allergens as inactive ingredients. Researchers have discovered some with 50-99% of their ingredients being inactive or non-pharmaceutical. Examples of common allergens used are gluten, lactose, peanut oil and FODMAP sugars. FODMAP sugars are a trigger to digestive problems. Most people don’t worry about the inactive ingredients. This is because small amounts of allergens added shouldn’t affect the average person. On the other hand, there is a select group of patients that will be affected, in addition to the patients taking multiple medications every day. For instance, a person taking 10 prescription medications a day will consume about 2.8 grams of inactive ingredients.
As a result of these findings, there has been a push for drug manufacturers to begin working on “free-from” medications that are a more pure version of the drug.
Newman, Tim. “93 Percent of Medications Contain ‘Potential Allergens’.” Medical News Today, MediLexicon International, 15 Mar. 2019, www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/324681.php.
