Request

Please provide the number of people aged 18 and over in England who have had a prescription dispensed for propantheline bromide 15mg tablets in 2023, 2024, and 2025 year to date. This includes prescriptions written as Pro-Banthine 15mg tablets or propantheline bromide 15mg tablets. Please break this down by month and include the number of prescription items dispensed and the total quantity dispensed.

Please also provide the number of repeat prescriptions (rather than single prescriptions) broken down by month or year if a monthly breakdown is not possible.

Response

I can confirm that the NHSBSA holds the information you have requested and a copy of the information and notes explaining it is attached.

Please read the below notes to ensure correct understanding of the data.

NHS Prescription Services process prescriptions for pharmacy contractors, appliance contractors, dispensing doctors and personal administration with information then used to make payments to pharmacists and appliance contractors in England for prescriptions dispensed in primary care settings (other arrangements are in place for making payments to dispensing doctors and personal administration). This involves processing over 1 billion prescription items and payments totalling over £9 billion each year. The information gathered from this process is then used to provide information on costs and trends in prescribing in England and Wales to over 25,000 registered NHS and Department of Health and Social Care users.

Exclusions

The Data excludes:

• items not dispensed, disallowed and those returned to the contractor for further clarification.

• prescriptions prescribed and dispensed in prisons, hospitals and private prescriptions.

• items prescribed but not presented for dispensing or not submitted to NHS Prescription Services by the dispenser.

• items supplied as part of a Pharmacy First consultation or service.

Data Source

The data source was the NHSBSA Information Services Data Warehouse.

Time Period

January 2023 - August 2025. August 2025 is the most recent month of available data.

Prescription Data

The data provided is for prescriptions dispensed in England.

Repeat prescribing

EPS repeat prescribing information is as stated on the EPS message originating from the GP IT system. NHSBSA does not validate information about the type of prescribing.

Drugs

The dataset is limited to the dispensing of Propantheline bromide 15mg tablets, including Pro-Banthine 15mg tablets.

Patients

Limited to patients where the age in years that was captured for the patient when the prescription was processed by NHSBSA for payment was 18 or over.

Prescriptions are only included if an NHS Number and an age has been captured during NHSBSA processing. 100% of patients within the limits of this dataset had an NHS Number and age recorded.

Data Queries

Please contact foirequests@nhsbsa.nhs.uk ensuring you quote the above reference if you have any specific questions regarding this response; or, if you feel you may be misunderstanding or misinterpreting the information; or, if you plan on publishing the data.

Reusing the data and copyright

If you plan on producing a press or broadcast story based upon the data please contact communicationsteam@nhsbsa.nhs.uk. This is important to ensure that the figures are not misunderstood or misrepresented.

The information supplied to you continues to be protected by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and is subject to NHSBSA copyright. This information is licenced under the terms of the Open Government Licence detailed at:

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/

Should you wish to re-use the information you must include the following statement: “NHSBSA Information Services Data Warehouse, NHSBSA Copyright 2025”. Failure to do so is a breach of the terms of the licence.

Information you receive which is not subject to NHSBSA Copyright continues to be protected by the copyright of the person, or organisation, from which the information originated. Please obtain their permission before reproducing any third party (non NHSBSA Copyright) information.