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Bupe Suboxone Film Shelf Life After Opening

M

Mafila

Bluelighter
Joined
Feb 4, 2009
Messages
93
I searched this forum as well as Google and haven't been able to find anything resembling a clear answer. I've read that they are supposed to last 12 months when closed but could not find anything on the shelf life of an open Suboxone film strip. The reason I ask is because I accidentally opened both of my last two film strips, which will last me about a week combined, and now I have an open one that will be sitting around for the next four days until I start taking it, although it will be gone within a week it is my last one and the shelf life question worries me a bit considering I don't get them as often or in the same quantity as most other people.

Should I worry about it degrading after a period of only a few days, or will it be fine for the week? Are there any things I could do to increase shelf life if the risk of degradation is significant? I heard that refrigerating them helps keep them fresh longer when they are closed, but I haven't been able to find anything on the effects of refrigeration if it is open. Right now I just squeezed all of the air out of the package, wrapped it up, and sealed it in a zip-lock bag, but I am not sure if that will make any significant difference if the shelf-life of an open strip is only a few days.

Sorry if I there is a thread about this hidden somewhere that I missed, I'm jut looking for some fairly timely advice. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks.
 
If you're only keeping it for about a week that will be fine. Keep it in the ziplock bag in a dry cool dark place. A few days really shouldn't make a difference.

The reason the shelf life for Suboxone film is listed as 12 months (kept at below 25°C) is in order to limit the degradation of the naloxone in it. Naloxone is extremely unstable in the soluble film formulation of Suboxone, and can degrade into impurities. Since the risks of consuming these impurities have not been studied enough, an expiry date was put on it to reduce the amount of impurities people would be consuming. The packaging for Suboxone film doesn't make such a huge difference that being out of the packaging would speed up the degradation of the naloxone from 1 year to a few days. And putting it in a sealed bag with no air in it should be good :)
 
Thanks for the quick and helpful response. Hopefully there will be some studies done in it in the future, usually when I look online I could find an answer to just about anything but I could not find any definitive answer on this anywhere.
 
I doubt they'll be doing any studies on it unless someone dies or something. Pharmaceutical manufacturers don't want to pay for more studies than are necessary or have to put more warnings on their product. People are just told to return it to the pharmacy if they receive a package that is already opened. They feel that there is no legit reason for someone to be taking already opened Suboxone film so they don't need to study it. And they want people to keep it in the package because it's easier to trace if it's diverted. But there haven't been any reported cases of someone having an adverse reaction when the film has been stored out of the packaging, and there is no warning to not remove it from the package until immediately before use, so I assume the degradation happens very slow, even when not packaged.
 
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