Is Lamivudine legal in the United Kingdom?

A thirty year old HIV and hepatitis B drug repurposed on the hypothesis that LINE-1 retrotransposons drive the sterile inflammation of ageing. The human ageing evidence is one 12 person open-label pilot in Alzheimer disease with no control group.

Roughly 40 percent of the human genome is retrotransposon sequence. Most of it is silenced, and the silencing appears to fail with age.

Mechanism: A cytidine analogue that is phosphorylated intracellularly to lamivudine triphosphate, which is incorporated by reverse transcriptase and terminates the growing DNA chain because it lacks a 3 prime hydroxyl group. In HIV and hepatitis B that stops viral replication.

Regulatory history: FDA approved for HIV-1 infection in combination therapy and, as a separate lower-dose product, for chronic hepatitis B. Not approved for ageing, inflammation or neurodegeneration.

Licenses medicines for the UK market. A compound without a marketing authorisation is an unlicensed medicine, which can only lawfully be supplied for human use through a prescriber under the specials scheme, not sold as a research product.

The classification above is the The Longevity Archive reading of Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency listings for Lamivudine at the reviewed date, not a legal opinion. Rules change, and importing, prescribing and possessing a compound can each be treated differently. Check the regulator directly before acting on anything here.