A study carried out by pharmacists from Vinatier focuses on the stability of drugs commonly used in psychiatry after their unpackaging, in order to better adapt dispensing practices.
Automated nominative dispensing now occupies an important place in the hospital medication circuit; it strengthens the traceability of medications and helps reduce dispensing and administration errors. At Vinatier, it is carried out by two reconditioning machines. This process requires removing medications from their primary packaging before repackaging, a step that raises a key question: how long does a medication maintain its stability once removed from its original packaging?
The knowledge available on this subject remains limited. In the absence of detailed data for the entire pharmacopoeia, pharmacists generally apply conservative shelf lives. While this precaution guarantees the safety of drug treatment, it can increase operational constraints and potential waste of drugs.
It is from this observation that the Stability Studies of Repackaged Medicines (ESMR) project was born. The objective is to provide scientific data on the stability of drugs commonly used in psychiatry after their depackaging, in order to better adapt dispensing practices.
The study focuses on several specialties: aripiprazole tablets (antipsychotic), in classic and orodispersible form, as well as sertraline capsules (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor antidepressant). Their physical and chemical stability is monitored for six months. In total, several hundred tablets were necessary to carry out the various tests. The drugs are stored in different conditions reproducing those encountered during the automated preparation of doses to be administered, but also in ambient conditions.
The project brings together the Vinatier pharmaceutical team, the pharmacology-toxicology laboratory of the Hospices Civils de Lyon and the Institute of Pharmaceutical and Biological Sciences of Lyon. This collaboration brings together the necessary skills, from the evaluation of galenic characteristics to dosages carried out using a laboratory analytical technique making it possible to measure the quantity of a drug with very high precision.
This work extends a first study carried out at Vinatier on the stability of clozapine after deconditioning, the results of which were published in theEuropean Journal of Hospital Pharmacy (Emonet et al.2024). This study showed that clozapine 100 mg Viatris tablets retained their physicochemical properties for 12 weeks after repackaging, under Vinatier production conditions.
In practice, this work aims to provide pharmaceutical and healthcare teams with reliable data to secure the drug circuit, facilitate the organization of nominative dispensing and contribute to patient care.
The results concerning aripiprazole should be published before the end of 2026. Those relating to sertraline are expected by the summer of 2027.
Jonathan Boisramé, Bertrand Clerc, Hélène MAILLOT, Pharmacists
