Tolmetin: uses, dosing, side effects & brands
Tolmetin 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
- Tablet · Capsule
- Sold as
- 3 products — Tolectin, Tolectin 600 and Tolectin Ds
- Prescription?
- Prescription only
- Generic available?
- Not in our catalog
- Half-life
- about 5 hours
Every tolmetin 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 | Not yet rated | Prescription | Tablet | No data | — | View → | |
| 2 | Not yet rated | Prescription | Tablet | No data | — | View → | |
| 3 | Not yet rated | Prescription | Capsule | No data | — | View → |
What tolmetin pills look like
Imprint codes, colour and shape from the FDA’s labelling data. Match the imprint on your pill — or search any imprint.
How long tolmetin keeps
No tolmetin 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.
Tolmetin and breastfeeding
From LactMed, the US National Library of Medicine’s Drugs and Lactation Database — quoted, not rewritten.
Full LactMed record for tolmetin: levels in milk, effects in breastfed infants, and the drugs it would consider insteadBecause of the low levels of tolmetin in breastmilk and its short half-life, it is unlikely to adversely affect the breastfed infant. However, because there is no published experience with breastfeeding during tolmetin use, other agents may be preferred, especially while nursing a newborn or preterm infant.
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, record revised June 15, 2025. LactMed states its information is not a substitute for professional judgement.
What people report to the FDA about tolmetin
The FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) collects reports from patients and clinicians. It holds 78 reports naming tolmetin, and the FDA flagged 54% 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:
- fatigue8 reports
- chronic kidney disease5 reports
- headache5 reports
- vomiting5 reports
- acute kidney injury4 reports
- arthralgia4 reports
- depression4 reports
- diarrhoea4 reports
Read these as a signal, not a rate. A report does not mean tolmetin 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 August 26, 2026.
How long tolmetin stays in your system
The elimination half-life of tolmetin is about 5 hours. Tolmetin shows biphasic plasma elimination: a rapid (distribution) phase with a half-life of 1 to 2 hours, followed by the terminal elimination phase with a half-life of about 5 hours — the 5-hour figure is the one to use. The drug's metabolite is inactive (an oxidative metabolite excreted along with tolmetin conjugates, essentially all recovered in urine within 24 hours), so there is no long-lasting active metabolite to account for. This label section does not state how the half-life changes with older age, kidney impairment, or liver impairment.
Tolmetin Sodium (DailyMed FDA label) — Clinical Pharmacology ↗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 calculators
Frequently asked questions
How long does tolmetin stay in your system?
The elimination half-life of tolmetin is about 5 hours — that is how long the body takes to clear half of a dose. Tolmetin shows biphasic plasma elimination: a rapid (distribution) phase with a half-life of 1 to 2 hours, followed by the terminal elimination phase with a half-life of about 5 hours — the 5-hour figure is the one to use. The drug's metabolite is inactive (an oxidative metabolite excreted along with tolmetin conjugates, essentially all recovered in urine within 24 hours), so there is no long-lasting active metabolite to account for. This label section does not state how the half-life changes with older age, kidney impairment, or liver impairment. 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 tolmetin 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 tolmetin 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 tolmetin sold under?
We track 3 tolmetin-containing products in the U.S.: Tolectin, Tolectin 600 and Tolectin Ds. They are the same active ingredient; they differ in form, manufacturer, price and FDA recall record.
What forms does tolmetin come in?
Across the brands we track, tolmetin is currently marketed as tablet and capsule, 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 tolmetin?
We do not currently list a generic-labelled tolmetin 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). Tolmetin: uses, dosing, side effects & brands. https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/tolmetin
- MLA
- “Tolmetin: uses, dosing, side effects & brands.” pharmaranks, 24 July 2026, https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/tolmetin.
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 tolmetin on DailyMed (NIH) ↗.