Nifedipine: uses, dosing, side effects & brands
Nifedipine is a medicine sold in the U.S. under 3 brand and generic names. Below: what the FDA label says, every product that contains it, what the pills look like, and its recall record.
Key facts
- Available as
- Capsule · Tablet, extended release
- Sold as
- 3 products — Procardia, Procardia XL and Adalat
- Prescription?
- Prescription only
- Generic available?
- Not in our catalog
- Half-life
- about 2 hours from an immediate-release capsule; about 7 hours as measured from the once-daily extended-release tablet
- What the pharmacy pays
- about $5 for a 30-count supply — not your price
Every nifedipine product we track (3)
Same active ingredient — different manufacturer, form, price and FDA recall record. That last one is what our independent score measures.
| # | Drug | Rating | Type | Form | Generic? | Pharmacy pays | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 60/100 | Prescription | Capsule | Generic | $5 | View → | |
| 2 | 60/100 | Prescription | Tablet | Generic | $5 | View → | |
| 3 | Not yet rated | Prescription | Capsule | Generic | $5 | View → |
What nifedipine pills look like
Imprint codes, colour and shape from the FDA’s labelling data. Match the imprint on your pill — or search any imprint.
Can you crush or split nifedipine?
At least one nifedipineproduct is labelled to be swallowed whole — crushing an extended-release tablet releases the whole day’s dose at once. Which applies depends on the form you were given.
What each nifedipine label says about crushing, splitting and chewingHow long nifedipine keeps
No nifedipine label we read sets a separate limit for after opening, but they do specify how it must be stored — and the stability behind any date assumes those conditions.
Nifedipine and breastfeeding
From LactMed, the US National Library of Medicine’s Drugs and Lactation Database — quoted, not rewritten.
Full LactMed record for nifedipine: levels in milk, effects in breastfed infants, and the drugs it would consider insteadBecause of the low levels of nifedipine in breastmilk, amounts ingested by the infant are small, even in women with a genetic variant of breast cancer resistance protein that increases the amount of drug transferred to milk. No adverse effects have been reported among infants exposed to nifedipine in breastmilk. Nifedipine is used to treat painful nipple vasospasm (e.g., Raynaud phenomenon) in nursing mothers who do not respond to other measures such as hot compresses and avoidance of cold exposure. The dosages of nifedipine most commonly reportedly used to treat the condition is 20 to 60 mg daily either as a single dose of a sustained-release product or 10 to 20 mg 3 times daily of an immediate-release product. Lower dosages can be tried if these doses are not tolerated.
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, record revised November 15, 2025. LactMed states its information is not a substitute for professional judgement.
What people report to the FDA about nifedipine
The FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) collects reports from patients and clinicians. It holds 43,783 reports naming nifedipine, and the FDA flagged 80% 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:
- dyspnoea2,308 reports
- diarrhoea2,237 reports
- fatigue2,174 reports
- nausea2,077 reports
- headache1,856 reports
- dizziness1,653 reports
- hypertension1,642 reports
- hypotension1,431 reports
Read these as a signal, not a rate. A report does not mean nifedipine 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.
Source: openFDA drug/event (FAERS), retrieved September 25, 2026.
How long nifedipine stays in your system
The elimination half-life of nifedipine is about 2 hours from an immediate-release capsule; about 7 hours as measured from the once-daily extended-release tablet. Nifedipine's half-life depends on the formulation you take, so a single number is misleading. The label states the elimination half-life is "approximately 7 hours" when nifedipine is given as the extended-release (osmotic/GITS) tablet, "in contrast to the known 2 hour elimination half-life of nifedipine administered as an immediate release capsule." The ~7-hour figure is the apparent half-life driven by the tablet's slow, ~24-hour drug release, not a slower elimination of the molecule itself. The label does not report separate distribution and terminal phases. Nifedipine is not a prodrug, and it has no active metabolite to worry about: it is "extensively metabolized to highly water soluble, inactive metabolites" via CYP3A4 (60-80% excreted in urine as metabolites, <0.1% unchanged), so the parent drug's half-life is the whole story. Populations the label names: in older adults (over 60), a sustained-release formulation showed a longer half-life in elderly subjects (6.7 hours) than in young subjects (3.8 hours), with reduced clearance and Cmax 36% higher; in liver impairment (cirrhosis), nifedipine "has a longer elimination half-life and higher bioavailability than in healthy volunteers"; in kidney impairment, the label reports no significant alteration in nifedipine pharmacokinetics in patients on hemodialysis or peritoneal dialysis (studied with the immediate-release capsule), though it advises caution because renal disease could change absorption from the extended-release tablet. Protein binding is high (92-98%) and "may be greatly reduced" in renal or hepatic impairment. Because nifedipine is a CYP3A4 substrate, drugs and foods that inhibit or induce CYP3A4 (grapefruit juice among them) can change its clearance. This describes how long the drug persists in plasma; it is not a drug-test detection window and not dosing guidance.
Nifedipine Extended-Release Tablets, USP — FDA label (DailyMed), CLINICAL PHARMACOLOGY: Pharmacokinetics and Metabolism ↗Half-life is how long the body takes to clear half a dose. It is not the same as how long a drug test can detect it, and it varies with age, kidney and liver function.
Related guides
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Frequently asked questions
How long does nifedipine stay in your system?
The elimination half-life of nifedipine is about 2 hours from an immediate-release capsule; about 7 hours as measured from the once-daily extended-release tablet — that is how long the body takes to clear half of a dose. Nifedipine's half-life depends on the formulation you take, so a single number is misleading. The label states the elimination half-life is "approximately 7 hours" when nifedipine is given as the extended-release (osmotic/GITS) tablet, "in contrast to the known 2 hour elimination half-life of nifedipine administered as an immediate release capsule." The ~7-hour figure is the apparent half-life driven by the tablet's slow, ~24-hour drug release, not a slower elimination of the molecule itself. The label does not report separate distribution and terminal phases. Nifedipine is not a prodrug, and it has no active metabolite to worry about: it is "extensively metabolized to highly water soluble, inactive metabolites" via CYP3A4 (60-80% excreted in urine as metabolites, <0.1% unchanged), so the parent drug's half-life is the whole story. Populations the label names: in older adults (over 60), a sustained-release formulation showed a longer half-life in elderly subjects (6.7 hours) than in young subjects (3.8 hours), with reduced clearance and Cmax 36% higher; in liver impairment (cirrhosis), nifedipine "has a longer elimination half-life and higher bioavailability than in healthy volunteers"; in kidney impairment, the label reports no significant alteration in nifedipine pharmacokinetics in patients on hemodialysis or peritoneal dialysis (studied with the immediate-release capsule), though it advises caution because renal disease could change absorption from the extended-release tablet. Protein binding is high (92-98%) and "may be greatly reduced" in renal or hepatic impairment. Because nifedipine is a CYP3A4 substrate, drugs and foods that inhibit or induce CYP3A4 (grapefruit juice among them) can change its clearance. This describes how long the drug persists in plasma; it is not a drug-test detection window and not dosing guidance. Half-life is not the same as how long a drug test can detect the drug, and it varies with age, kidney and liver function.
Can you take nifedipine 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 nifedipine against whatever else you take — and remember that a label not naming a drug is not the same as that combination being safe.
What brand names is nifedipine sold under?
We track 3 nifedipine-containing products in the U.S.: Procardia, Procardia XL and Adalat. They are the same active ingredient; they differ in form, manufacturer, price and FDA recall record.
What forms does nifedipine come in?
Across the brands we track, nifedipine is currently marketed as capsule and tablet, extended release, per the FDA's National Drug Code Directory. Each form is dosed differently — follow the label for the exact product you were prescribed.
Is there a generic nifedipine?
We do not currently list a generic-labelled nifedipine product. That does not always mean none exists — it means none appears under a generic name in the FDA data we track. Ask your pharmacist.
Cite this page
- APA
- pharmaranks. (2026, July 24). Nifedipine: uses, dosing, side effects & brands. https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/nifedipine
- MLA
- “Nifedipine: uses, dosing, side effects & brands.” pharmaranks, 24 July 2026, https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/nifedipine.
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 nifedipine on DailyMed (NIH) ↗.