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Author: Admin | 2025-04-28
Drugs. The country, which is—Latin America’s largest pharmaceutical market, “wanted to be in the global market,” and for emerging economies, tightening pharmaceutical standards, including names, to comply with the strictest regulators is a natural part of that evolution, says Domenica Redeschi, vice president of Brazil & Latin American Regulatory Affairs at the Drug Safety Institute, an arm of Brand Institute. Through its drug regulator ANVISA, the country began implementing drug naming regulations in 2017, and enforcing them in 2019, broadly matching the rules of the FDA, EMA, and HealthCanada, and putting them in compliance with the WHO’s drug naming rules.Prior to that, Brazil’s only drug naming rule was that it couldn’t have more than three letters in a row the same as another drug, says Redeschi.In a globalized economy, the potential for confusion is greater if countries don’t share consistent naming conventions. “That’s a major safety issue,” she says.But finding a name that agrees with multiple languages, and multiple regulators, poses another challenge, says Redeschi. In English-speaking markets, simply adding a silent “h” to a name can take a drug “from red to green”—but in Brazil, it’s another cause for confusion. “In Portuguese, you pronounce every single syllable. There is no such thing as a silent letter,” Redeschi says. That’s why the popular drug for hot flashes, is known as Veozah in the U.S., and Veosa in Brazil. Slang is a factor, too. One name floated for an antidepressant drug had the term “gozo” embedded into it. In some Spanish-speaking countries, “gozo” means to enjoy and have fun; in Brazil, it has a sexual connotation—which was problematic on two counts: It incorporated a crude slang phrase, and it would be easy to assume it was a drug for impotence. “This obviously never made it to market,” says Redeschi. “There is the regulatory part which we need to follow. But there's also linguistic culture. What do you see when you look at this name? What comes to your mind? What's the connotation? It’s very important from a safety standpoint.”More Than A NameBut Alexander points out that avoiding drug confusion is about
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