Hannah asked
I had sex with my boyfriend about 3 days ago and I looked at my birth control that I had gotten over a year ago and the expiration date says 5/21. Does this mean as in 2021? Also he used a condom so how safe am I with if it was expired?
Answer
When a prescription medication lists the expiration as two numbers (e.g. 5/21), it refers to the month and year of expiration. Therefore, your birth control product expires on May 2021.
For reference, we discuss below whether or not it is safe to use expired birth control if you run across that situation in the future.
Can You Safely Use Expired Birth Control Pills?
In most cases it is not recommended to take expired drugs (past the listed manufacturer expiration date). The main issue is that the product may not have the same effectiveness or potency it once had when it was in date. Often times, it is impossible to tell whether or not a medication is "good" after it has been expired. The product may look the same as it had before, but there could be unseen degradation.It is important to be confident that your medication will have the desired effect when you take it. This is especially true of birth control pills due to the potential consequences of unplanned pregnancy.
Expiration dates of medication are determined by the manufacturer of the product based on stability data obtained from testing. It almost never means that the drug goes bad after the date. It is the date however, where we can confidently say that the product will still be effective and will not be degraded to a large extent. In reality, a drug may be good for a long time after the listed expiration date, but there just haven't been any studies on it to know one way or the other.
Most manufactures will pick a two to three year expiration date for simplicity purposes so they don't need to perform longer stability tests. In addition, a shorter shelf will necessitate replenishment of product after a relatively short amount of time.
Summary
The date listed on your product is referencing the month and year of expiration. Therefore 5/21 means May 2021 expiration. It should not be taken after that date as you cannot guarantee that it will have the same potency as it once had before, potentially leading to treatment failure if the product has degraded.
