Top 200 Brand and Generic Drugs for 2024 Exams!

200 Must-Know Medicines!

Learning the top 200 brand and generic drugs can be daunting. Many medicines have more than one active ingredient – and there are often many different brand medicines for each drug. This makes the learning process a long and gruelling one.

The MCQ format of the PTCB exam is in your favor, though.

Many medicines have similarities with either the drug name or the disease or condition it is licensed to treat. Once you begin to identify these similarities, it becomes much easier to “match” them on the day of your exam.

For example:

• Medicine: Clozaril; active ingredient: clozapine; an antipsychotic drug.
• Medicine: Glucophage; active ingredient: metformin; an antidiabetic drug. The name Glucophage derives from “glucose” and “phage”, which derives from the Greek for “eater”.
• Medicine: Diflucan; active ingredient: fluconazole; an antifungal drug.
• Medicine: Haldol; active ingredient: haloperidol; an antipsychotic drug.
• Medicine: Ventolin; active ingredient: albuterol; a beta-2 agonist used to treat asthma. Think of “hyperventilation”, or rapid breathing.

That said, there are many medicines that do not have these kinds of obvious links. Technicians must memorize the drugs with clear links between the medicine and the name. Once these are committed to memory, you can easily identify them from a list of 4 MCQ options on the day of your exam.

Once done, you can spend more time on the more difficult ones. That’s where flashcards come in. At PTCB Test Prep, we have prepared hundreds of flashcards to help you commit these medicines to memory – detailing the top medicines, indications, side effects, and mechanisms of action. Flashcards, if made the right way, are the best way to learn the top 200 brand and generic medicines.

It is about practice, practice, practice – and repeat exposure to the names of medicines and drugs. Eventually, the medicines will stick. If you cannot find a link between a medicine name and a drug, invent a memorable one – even if it happens to sound bizarre.

In fact, the more bizarre the link, the more memorable it becomes.

For example: vardenafil is the active ingredient of Levitra. No tangible links. However, we can create one. Take the prefix, LEVIT-, and turn it into levitate, something that rises. Vardenafil is used to treat erectile dysfunction, so the concept of levitation/rising suits quite well in this case. Now, every time we think about Levitra, we will remember levitate/rise and its now obvious link to erectile dysfunction!

With that said, let’s turn our attention to the top 200 brand and generic drugs – each of which is detailed with all active ingredients and the drug class each active ingredient belongs to.

Top 200 Brand and Generic Drugs!

Note: when you’ve finished studying the table below, take our Top 200 Drugs Quiz!

Master the Top 200 Drugs

Found this helpful? Become a registered member of PTCB Test Prep today to master all the facts you need to know about the top 200 drugs and medicines. Neat and concise study notes, flashcards, test questions and much more. Learn more about our self-paced online course.