Answer:

Active ingredients

Active ingredients give the product its medicinal effect.

Some examples of active ingredients are:

paracetamol in pain relief medicines

atorvastatin in cholesterol-lowering medicines

ascorbic acid (vitamin C) in some multivitamins.

Inactive ingredients

Inactive ingredients (also known as excipients) are all the other non-active ingredients used in a medicine. Some inactive ingredients are essential for a medicine to function as intended.

Some examples of types of inactive ingredients are:

preservatives

flavours

colours

fillers that help a tablet stick together.

Manufacturing aids

A manufacturing or processing aid is a substance that helps make the medicine but is not meant to stay in it. Sometimes medicines have trace amounts of these substances, but they are not considered medicine ingredients.

Some examples of manufacturing aids are:

soy oil used as a lubricant

egg used to culture vaccines.

How to find ingredient information

To find out about the ingredients in your medicine, first check the medicine label. The label includes important information about the medicine, including:

the name and amount of the medicine's active ingredients

any common allergens that are ingredients in the medicine, such as milk or peanut products

any common allergens used in the manufacture of the medicine that are likely to be present in the medicine.

Medicine labels do not always list all the inactive ingredients in the medicine