Nitrous Oxide: uses, dosing, side effects & brands
Nitrous Oxide 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
- Available as
- Gas
- Sold as
- Nitrous Oxide, Usp
- Prescription?
- Prescription only
- Generic available?
- Not in our catalog
Every nitrous oxide 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: Nitrous Oxide, Usp.
Nitrous Oxide and breastfeeding
From LactMed, the US National Library of Medicine’s Drugs and Lactation Database — quoted, not rewritten.
Full LactMed record for nitrous oxide: levels in milk, effects in breastfed infants, and the drugs it would consider insteadBecause the serum half-life of nitrous oxide in the mother is short and the drug is not expected to be absorbed by the infant, no waiting period or discarding of milk is required. Some evidence indicates that primiparous mothers who use inhaled nitrous oxide during labor for analgesia have better breastfeeding success than mothers who do not. If used as part of general anesthesia, breastfeeding can be resumed as soon as the mother has recovered sufficiently from anesthesia to nurse. When a combination of anesthetic agents is used for a procedure, follow the recommendations for the most problematic medication used during the procedure.
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, record revised February 15, 2023. LactMed states its information is not a substitute for professional judgement.
What people report to the FDA about nitrous oxide
The FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) collects reports from patients and clinicians. It holds 2,649 reports naming nitrous oxide, and the FDA flagged 93% 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:
- bradycardia140 reports
- hypotension137 reports
- anaesthetic complication neurological125 reports
- subacute combined cord degeneration87 reports
- tachycardia70 reports
- pulmonary oedema66 reports
- hyperthermia malignant63 reports
- vomiting62 reports
Read these as a signal, not a rate. A report does not mean nitrous oxide 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.
Related calculators
Frequently asked questions
Can you take nitrous oxide 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 nitrous oxide against whatever else you take — and remember that a label not naming a drug is not the same as that combination being safe.
What forms does nitrous oxide come in?
Across the brands we track, nitrous oxide is currently marketed as gas, 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 nitrous oxide?
We do not currently list a generic-labelled nitrous oxide 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). Nitrous Oxide: uses, dosing, side effects & brands. https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/nitrous-oxide
- MLA
- “Nitrous Oxide: uses, dosing, side effects & brands.” pharmaranks, 24 July 2026, https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/nitrous-oxide.
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 nitrous oxide on DailyMed (NIH) ↗.