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How does liraglutide at 5 mg weekly compare on cost per milligram across routes?

Asked 8 Apr 2026Modified 24 days agoViewed 4k times
9

For reference: liraglutide · 5 mg.

I would like the arithmetic checked rather than the conclusion asserted.

I have deliberately not used an online calculator because I want to be able to check the result.

Can someone walk through the arithmetic step by step?

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askedahmed_zerouali15k178 Apr 2026

1 Answer

Sorted by votes
8

5 mg a week is 260 mg a year and 21.7 mg in an average month — put every route on that denominator before comparing anything. Cost per milligram is the only figure that survives the comparison, because the presentations differ: a licensed pen prices a dose, a compounding pharmacy prices a vial, and a research supplier prices a mass. Divide each one's twelve-month cost by 260 mg and the three become the same number in the same unit. Then add what the cheapest route does not include — independent purity and content testing, the vials you discard, and the postage — because a route that needs testing to be trustworthy has that testing in its cost per milligram whether you account for it or not.

The relevant arithmetic is that a fifteen per cent price advantage disappears against a ten per cent content shortfall plus a testing cost.

The full calculation: (unit price + carriage share + testing share) ÷ (nominal mg × measured content fraction × (1 − dead-space and wastage fraction)). Every term after the first is routinely omitted.

Cost per milligram, adjusted honestly

StepValueNote
Vial price, 10 mg nominal£34.00As advertised
Nominal cost per mg£3.4034 ÷ 10
Measured content9.2 mgIndependent content assay
Cost per actual mg£3.7034 ÷ 9.2
Dead-space loss, 20 draws4 %80 µL of a 2 mL fill
Cost per delivered mg£3.853.70 ÷ 0.96
First vial, with £110 assay£14.85Testing dominates a single vial

Independent testing costs roughly the price of one to two vials at the services this community uses. On a two-vial order that is a fifty to a hundred per cent surcharge; on a twenty-vial order it is five per cent.

Fixed-needle syringes save more peptide than most price differences do.

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answeredaine_mulcahy28k275 Jul 2026
4Worth flagging that comparing across laboratories is comparing laboratories, not suppliers. – claudia_ferrante 4 months ago
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