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Claritin

Loratadine

An oral daily allergy medication used to treat runny nose, itchy eyes, and sneezing.

Generic name
Loratadine
Brand name
Claritin
Route
Oral
Marketed by
Bayer
First FDA approval
12 Apr 1993

Where Loratadine is approved

All regulators →

Of the three regulators tracked here, the first to approve Loratadine was the US, on 12 Apr 1993. It is approved in 2 of the 3 regulators tracked here.

USUnited States (FDA)
12 Apr 1993
Claritin
NDA019658 on Drugs@FDA
First original NDA/BLA approval
EUEuropean Union (EMA)
No centralised EU authorisation (it may be authorised nationally)
First centralised authorisation
CACanada (Health Canada)
10 Feb 2012
Loratadine Soft Gel Capsules
Notice of Compliance 13029
First new-drug NOC

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 Loratadine

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ENNHS England
£1.7m
1,410,670 items dispensed, Aug 2025 to Jul 2026
-9% on the previous 12 months
Net ingredient cost, community prescriptions
USUS Medicaid
$44.6m
5,250,488 prescriptions in 2025 · Loratadine, Childrens Loratadine, Loratadine Allergy Relief
-4% on 2024
Amount Medicaid reimbursed, before rebates

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 Loratadine works

All drug targets →
  • Histamine H1 receptor antagonist Antagonist
    Target: HRH1 histamine receptor H1
    ✓ In ChEMBL and the Guide to Pharmacology
Diseases it has been tested for in clinical trials, by furthest phase
  • Nasal congestionPhase 3
  • AsthmaPhase 3
  • NeuropathyPhase 3
  • COVID-19Phase 2/3
  • Bone painPhase 2
  • Eosinophilic esophagitisPhase 2
  • LymphangioleiomyomatosisPhase 2
  • PsoriasisPhase 2

Mechanisms and diseases from ChEMBL via the Open Targets Platform (release 26.09), ChEMBL record CHEMBL998, CC BY-SA 3.0. Targets checked against the IUPHAR/BPS Guide to PHARMACOLOGY (2026.3), ligand 7216, 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 Loratadine

The package leaflet is the official guide for patients that comes with every medicine. These links go to the regulators that publish it.

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 Loratadine

ATC code
R06AX13
ChEMBL
CHEMBL998
DrugBank
DB00455
PubChem CID
3957
CAS number
79794-75-5
FDA UNII
7AJO3BO7QN
Wikidata
Q424049
Wikipedia
Loratadine

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 Claritin is used for

temporarily relieves these symptoms due to hay fever or other upper respiratory allergies: runny nose sneezing itchy, watery eyes itching of the nose or throat

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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.

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.

Please verify before you rely on this. This page is general information for life-science and pharmaceutical professionals. It is not medical advice, and it has not been reviewed by a clinician — our editorial team holds life-science qualifications, not clinical ones. It is not exhaustive and may not reflect the most recent label change. Always check the official prescribing information (US Prescribing Information or EU SmPC) and speak to your doctor or pharmacist before acting on anything here. Drugs in the same class are not automatically interchangeable, and approvals, brand names and indications differ between the US, the EU/Ireland (EMA/HPRA) and other regions. Spotted an error? Tell us — we correct promptly and log it.