Pepcid
An oral or intravenous medication used to prevent and relieve heartburn and acid indigestion.
Where Famotidine is approved
All regulators →Of the three regulators tracked here, the first to approve Famotidine was the US, on 15 Oct 1986. It is approved in 2 of the 3 regulators tracked here.
From the regulators' own registers: FDA Drugs@FDA, the EMA medicines list and Health Canada's Notice of Compliance database. Dates are the first listed approval of a product containing only this substance; combination products and nationally authorised EU medicines are not counted.
What health systems spend on Famotidine
All medicines →From NHSBSA Prescription Cost Analysis (Open Government Licence v3.0) and CMS State Drug Utilization Data. Both are gross amounts: neither system publishes its discounts or rebates per drug. Products combining several substances are not counted here.
How Famotidine works
All drug targets →- Histamine H2 receptor antagonist AntagonistTarget: HRH2 histamine receptor H2✓ In ChEMBL and the Guide to Pharmacology
- COVID-19Phase 3
- DysmenorrheaPhase 3
- FatiguePhase 3
- HeadachePhase 3
- PainPhase 3
- Sleep disturbancePhase 3
- Diffuse large B-cell lymphomaPhase 3
- DysautonomiaPhase 3
- GastritisPhase 3
- Peptic esophagitisPhase 3
Mechanisms and diseases from ChEMBL via the Open Targets Platform (release 26.09), ChEMBL record CHEMBL902, CC BY-SA 3.0. Targets checked against the IUPHAR/BPS Guide to PHARMACOLOGY (2026.3), ligand 7074, CC BY-SA 4.0. Trial phases are not approvals: approved uses are shown from the regulators' own records where we hold them.
Patient leaflets for Famotidine
The package leaflet is the official guide for patients that comes with every medicine. These links go to the regulators that publish it.
- IEIreland: 7 products on the HPRA listEach product record links to the HPRA, which publishes the leaflet and SmPC.
- UKUnited Kingdom: Search MHRA ProductsPatient information leaflets and SmPCs for UK-licensed products.
- USUnited States: Search DailyMedFDA-approved labels, including patient and medication guides.
Leaflets differ between brands and countries; always read the one that comes with your own medicine. This is regulatory information, not medical advice.
Reference identifiers for Famotidine
- ATC code
- A02BA03
- ChEMBL
- CHEMBL902
- DrugBank
- DB00927
- PubChem CID
- 5353622
- CAS number
- 76824-35-6
- FDA UNII
- 5QZO15J2Z8
- Wikidata
- Q411159
- Wikipedia
- Famotidine
Codes that identify this medicine in other databases, from Wikidata (CC0), matched by its ChEMBL ID. The ATC code is the WHO classification of what the medicine is used for.
What Pepcid is used for
PEPCID tablets are indicated in adult and pediatric patients 40 kg and greater for the treatment of: • active duodenal ulcer (DU). • active gastric ulcer (GU). • symptomatic nonerosive gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). • erosive esophagitis due to GERD, diagnosed by biopsy. PEPCID tablets are indicated in adults for the: • treatment of pathological hypersecretory conditions (e.g., Zollinger-Ellison syndrome, multiple endocrine neoplasias). • reduction of the risk of duodenal ulcer recurrence. PEPCID is a histamine-2 (H2) receptor antagonist indicated (1): In adult and pediatric patients 40 kg and greater for the treatment of: • active duodenal ulcer (DU). • active gastric ulcer. • symptomatic nonerosive gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). • erosive esophagitis due to GERD, diagnosed by biopsy. In adults for the: • treatment of pathological hypersecretory conditions (e.g., Zoll…
How it works
12.1 Mechanism of Action Famotidine is a competitive inhibitor of histamine-2 (H2) receptors. The primary clinically important pharmacologic activity of famotidine is inhibition of gastric secretion. Both the acid concentration and volume of gastric secretion are suppressed by famotidine, while changes in pepsin secretion are proportional to volume output.
Compare Pepcid with
Explore more
How this page is built
The facts on this page are pulled directly from official U.S. FDA datasets — they are not written from memory. Each field below names the dataset it came from, so you can check it yourself.
- FDA Drug Label (openFDA) ↗ Indications, mechanism of action and pharmacologic class
- Drugs@FDA ↗ First FDA approval date and the company holding the application
- FDA Drug Shortage Database ↗ Current US supply / shortage status
Plain-English summaries and drug-class explainers are written and reviewed by Sreepriya Prasannan (MSc Digital Transformation of Life Sciences (Innopharma Education / Griffith College); MSc & BSc Botany). Data is retrieved automatically from the sources above and cross-checked with AI-assisted verification (Anthropic's Claude) — brand and generic names are matched against the exact FDA product record so that a combination product or a different formulation cannot be mistaken for the drug on this page. An editor reviews the result before publication. We describe this in full in our editorial standards and corrections policy. The FDA data on this page was last retrieved on 11 Oct 2026. How every register is built: methodology · fixes we have made: corrections log.