Bioequivalence studies: Relevance for veterinary medicine

Abstract

Bioequivalence (BE) studies are scientific methods that allow comparison of different medicinal products containing the same active substance, or different batches of the same medicinal products or, in a broad sense, different routes of administration of the same product.Actually, legislation on generic drugs and bioequivalence only exist in Brazil for drugs intended for human purposes. In the field of Veterinary Medicine, BE is being used in many countries as part of the necessary requirements for registration of animal health products, i.e., to provide efficacy and safety animal data and to allow consumers safety; indeed, they also assure the quality of the food derived from treated animals. The present manuscript was designed to review and discuss BE; for that, it was divided into three major parts: 1- understanding bioequivalence: importance of BE studies for animal and human health; 2- type of BE studies included; 3- general consideration on experimental design involved o BE studies