- 50p per pill for leading brands, compared with 10p for cheapest versions
- Experts say ingredients are identical and people are lured by marketing
- Price difference means sufferers could pay £90 compared to £18 a year
Tom Witherow For The Daily Mail
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Best-selling hayfever tablets cost up to five times as much as less well-known brands – even though the pills are exactly the same.
Allergy sufferers are charged up to 50p per pill for leading brands, compared with just 10p for the cheapest versions, a Daily Mail survey found.
Experts said the tablets’ ingredients are identical and that ‘clever marketing’ lured people into spending more.
Options: Boots sells a pack of seven tablets containing loratadine for £3.49, while less well-known Galpharm allergy relief, available from Boots, Superdrug, Lidl, Spar and Ocado, retails for 99p (file picture)
Small print on the boxes reveals many pills have the same product licence number (PL), which means they contain exactly the same ingredients.
The price difference means that over the six months when tree and grass pollen is around, sufferers taking a tablet a day could pay £90 for Boots and BecoAllergy medicines or as little as £18 for cheaper brands.
The two main types of non-drowsy hayfever treatment contain either loratadine or cetirizine dihydrochloride as their active ingredient.
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Both drugs are antihistamines and identical pills of both type are sold to hayfever sufferers at widely varying prices.
Boots sells a pack of seven tablets containing loratadine for £3.49, while less well-known Galpharm allergy relief, available from Boots, Superdrug, Lidl, Spar and Ocado, retails for 99p.
The pills inside are identical with the same PL code on the packet. The same is true of cetirizine tablets.
A packet of seven BecoAllergy pills costs 50p per tablet, while a larger 30 pack of Galpharm pills costs just 10p each.
Because firms do not claim their more expensive products are more effective, they are not breaching advertising rules.
Amena Warner, head of clinical services at Allergy UK, said people were willing to pay higher prices because of advertising: ‘It’s what consumers recognise as trusted so they might see something being marketed in a certain way and they would be guided by that information. It’s clever marketing,’
Professor Jayne Lawrence, chief scientist of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society said: ‘Branded and generic products are the same if the dose of the drug and the formulation are exactly the same.
‘Whether they are branded or generic, all medicines are made to high standards, so you can be reassured your medicine is safe.’
Professor Anna Murphy, of the Anaphylaxis Campaign, added: ‘Both branded and non-branded hay fever medicines which contain the same active ingredient have a similar clinical effect, so there are no practical reasons for the cost difference.’
Boots said it was ‘committed to offering great value and healthcare products and advice.’
The company that makes BecoAllergy did not comment.
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