@article{Nardi_Masina_Cioni_Leandri_Zuccheri_2014, title={Generic - equivalent drugs use in internal and general medicine patients: distrust, confusion, lack of certainties or knowledge? Part 1. Pharmacological issues}, volume={8}, url={https://www.italjmed.org/ijm/article/view/itjm.2014.398}, DOI={10.4081/itjm.2014.398}, abstractNote={Despite compelling evidence and guidelines, in Italy, generic/equivalent drugs are still underused. The failure to adopt existing generic drugs may result into a missed opportunity to further reduce healthcare costs. Equivalent drugs are approved based on data deriving from bioequivalence studies. In the first part of the article, the concepts of generic/equivalent drugs are defined, emphasizing the differences between pharmaceutical equivalence, therapeutic equivalence, bioequivalence and bioavailability. A summary of the methods adopted to define bioequivalence (pharmacokinetic studies; pharmacodynamic studies; comparative clinical trials; <em>in vitro</em> studies) is also included.}, number={2}, journal={Italian Journal of Medicine}, author={Nardi, Roberto and Masina, Marco and Cioni, Giorgio and Leandri, Paolo and Zuccheri, Paola}, year={2014}, month={May}, pages={80–87} }