Because it looks professional, takes up space on the label and they probably chose 4 years because legit pharma chose the same.
If you guys didn’t think your product expired you wouldn’t of put a expiration date on your product. Try again. It’s well know or at least well talked about that the vials break down after a few years. It’s also said that the oils may degrade and lose concentration. This is why I asked the questions I did. Curious to know the reasoning behind 4 years. Others say it’s much less than that but I’ve also read 5 years depending if it’s properly stored.
This is from a TRT forum but I thought it might be of interest to your question.
Easy breezy question about expiration date on T
The quote is from the middle but
"This is a great question as there is a lot on confusion on how Beyond Use Dates (BUD) are established with compounded products. All compounders are required to use the United States Pharmacopeia (USP) standards when compounding preparations. USP states that for Oil-Based Products a BUD of 6 months or less shall be used if a stability study isn't available for that specific compound. For Water Based Products a BUD of 14 days or less shall be used if a stability study isn't available for that specific compound.
The reason manufacturers can assign 2-3 year Expiration Dates is because they have performed stability studies that take $100,000+ and years to perform. Obviously, compounders cannot afford to do these studies, so when assigning a beyond-use date, compounders consult and apply drug-specific and general stability documentation and literature, and consider the nature of the drug and its degradation mechanism, the container in which it is packaged, the expected storage conditions, and the intended duration of therapy to come to a conservative BUD.
There are many factors to consider in a compounded product including the preservative, base, concentration, excipient, source of active ingredient, vial, stopper, seal, sterilization method, etc. If any of these factors in a compounded product deviates greatly from a manufacturer's then we can't use the same stability results the manufacturer came up with. Since most compounds are made differently from manufactured products we assign very conservative BUDs.
Even though some compounders feel safe to assume stability information on certain compounds, like testosterone cypionate, and have years of data from patients receiving good results from the medication even after the 6 month BUD has past, technically we are still required to put a BUD of 6 months or less unless we have the proper stability study to reference and our product doesn't vary greatly from the manufacture's.
I've personally done 2 year long potency over time studies on our Testosterone Cypionate and it's shown a degradation of less than 7%, but this isn't considered a full blown stability study that the FDA considers valid. Other compounders put what they feel comfortable with at the risk of getting in trouble with the FDA, but that all depends on the compounder."
It's the owner of a compounding pharmacy who tested his testosterone over time. He found that it lost 6-7% potency every 2 years. I am assuming companies assign 4 year Expiration dates because after that time period it would no longer be within the +/- 10% requirement.
Different sources obviously have different recipes but just for general reference.
