polypill

A polypill or single pill combination (SPC) is a type of drug combination consisting of a single drug product in pill form (i.e., tablet or capsule) and thus combines multiple medications (that is, more than one active pharmaceutical ingredient). The prefix "poly" means "multiple", referring to the multiplicity of distinct drugs in a given "pill". In precise usage, a pill is a polypill if it contains at least 4 drugs (meaning that fixed-dose combinations of 2 or 3 drugs are not polypills). An occasional synonym is combopill. A polypill commonly targets treatment or prevention of chronic conditions.

Polypills may be aimed to be consumed by healthy people as a means of preventive medicine, and/or treating actual pathophysiological condition(s), the former typically involving lower dosages than the latter. Polypills can reduce the number of tablets or capsules (generally orally administered) that need to be taken, which in turn may facilitate handling and administration of pharmaceuticals as well as alleviate patient pill-burden. Sometimes the multiple drugs in a given polypill might all be aimed at a single underlying condition (or, group of related conditions), partly because this expands the pool of potential patients for whom a given combination of drugs/dosages might be appropriate (particularly in the case of mass-produced polypills, i.e. FDCs). The term polypill was first coined in the context of cardiovascular disease prevention, but has since gained broader acceptance, including now for combinatorial drug products that existed before the term was actually coined (as the bare term without any modifiers is now quite generic).