Naming of drugs

BMJ 1996;313:688-689 (14 September)

Letters

Naming of drugs

Differences between nomenclatures are much greater than editorialsuggested

EDITOR,--C F George discusses the difficulties that will resultfrom the European Commission's directive which states that theinternational non-proprietary name, not the British approvedname, must appear on the labels and leaflets of medicinal productsfrom January 1998.¹ George underestimates the problem, however,in asserting that "in total, 41 drugs have a British approvedname that is significantly different to their recommended internationalnon-proprietary name." I recently reviewed this issue and comparedthe official listings of the British approved names and theinternational non-proprietary names.² If we ignore differencesin spelling, such as cyclosporin (whose international non-proprietaryname is ciclosporin) and oestradiol (estradiol), the numberof important differences between the two nomenclatures is wellover 100 (table 1); this figure includes some widely used drugs,such as actinomycin D, bupropion, chlorpheniramine, dipyrone,hydroxyurea, nicoumalone, plasmin, povidone, and thiopentone.