Evening Primrose Oil: uses, dosing, side effects & brands
Evening Primrose Oil is a medicine sold in the U.S. under one brand. Below: what the FDA label says, every product that contains it, what the pills look like, and its recall record.
Key facts
- Sold as
- Evening Primrose Oil
- Generic available?
- Yes
Every evening primrose oil product we track (1)
Same active ingredient — different manufacturer, form, price and FDA recall record. That last one is what our independent score measures.
Only one: Evening Primrose Oil.
What people report to the FDA about evening primrose oil
The FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) collects reports from patients and clinicians. It holds 1,209 reports naming evening primrose oil, and the FDA flagged 69% of those reports as serious. The effects reported most often — leaving out reports about overdose, misuse or the condition being treated, which dominate the raw list for common medicines:
- fatigue140 reports
- nausea128 reports
- headache120 reports
- dizziness100 reports
- arthralgia83 reports
- malaise80 reports
- diarrhoea77 reports
- pain in extremity70 reports
Read these as a signal, not a rate. A report does not mean evening primrose oil caused the effect — anyone can file one, and many describe people taking several medicines for several conditions. Crucially there is no denominator: FAERS does not record how many people took the drug, so these counts cannot be turned into “X% of patients” — a bigger number often just means a more widely used or more talked-about drug. Duplicates exist, and publicity drives reporting. For what is actually established, read the FDA label section above.
Source: openFDA drug/event (FAERS), retrieved July 25, 2026.
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Frequently asked questions
What is Evening Primrose Oil?
Evening Primrose Oil is a dietary supplement.
Can you take evening primrose oil with other medicines?
It depends on the medicine. We check it against the FDA labels rather than guessing: our interaction checker searches each drug's own label for the other and quotes what it says, naming the section it came from. Run evening primrose oil against whatever else you take — and remember that a label not naming a drug is not the same as that combination being safe.
Is there a generic evening primrose oil?
Yes. Our catalog lists 1 generic evening primrose oil product alongside the brand versions. A generic has the same active ingredient and must meet the FDA's bioequivalence standard; it usually costs less. Ask your pharmacist which one your plan covers.
Cite this page
- APA
- pharmaranks. (2026, July 24). Evening Primrose Oil: uses, dosing, side effects & brands. https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/evening-primrose-oil
- MLA
- “Evening Primrose Oil: uses, dosing, side effects & brands.” pharmaranks, 24 July 2026, https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/evening-primrose-oil.
We summarise public FDA and NIH sources — for a clinical claim, cite the primary source we link to as well.
Sources: FDA openFDA drug label, National Drug Code Directory, and Enforcement (recall) database. This page reproduces public FDA data and is not medical advice. Dosing is set by your prescriber.
Read the full FDA label for evening primrose oil on DailyMed (NIH) ↗.