Update - next episode in the thrilling saga
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I have heard back from Besins and the letter does confirm what they said all along - there is no difference between the two products. Any difference in carbomer on the leaflets is an error! Here is what they say:
"Our Regulatory Department have confirmed that the leaflet in the Oestrodose pump packs (French pack) have an error in them. The carbomer was changed in 1999 to Carbopol 980 but the change to the leaflet was missed in error and has only just been noticed. The leaflets have now been changed and will be implemented in future productions. The parallel importer will therefore also need to update their leaflet."This does not suprise me although attention to detail is pretty important when it comes to everything medical/scientific so someone hasn't checked properly.
(As an aside this also occurred with utrogestan (error in leaflet not being updated) when they stopped producing the 200 mg dose for HRT but continued to use the leaflet for 100 mg without updating for cyclical HRT - I know we're not talking about utrogestan but this is just another example of errors in leaflets!).
I wrote to Chemilines again but still no reply and on re-reading the responses from Besins, the supply chain is a bit longer than I originally understood - the Oestrodose/Oestrogel (ie the packs of their 0.06% estradiol gel), in its boxes/canisters as produced by Besins, is sold to a wholesaler and shipped to the parallel importer in UK, so presumably Chemilines (also known as S and M Medical Ltd) buy it from the wholesaler - and then do the repackaging (of the outer bottle/pump-pack/rewriting of the leaflet).
This at least completely confirms what they said earlier that the product produced by Besins in France (Belgium?) is just one product - exactly the same but given different names) and that the product repackaged by the parallel importer is Oestrodose/Oestrogel - the same gel - unless the parallel importer on occasion buys a similar product produced elsewhere - although Besins told me they do not produce any gel elswhere in the world. This is what they said in their first e-mail (which I quoted at the start of this thread):
"All of the Besins Oestrogen Gels have exactly the same qualititative and quantitative compositions and are all manufactured at Besins Healthcare, Belgium"Still not got to the bottom of the parallel importer ie whether on occasion something fishy (and fraudulent) is going on though but if Besins do not manufacture elsewhere I can't see how....
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but do hope this is helpful and of interest to those who were still wondering!
Hurdity x