Hi Gnatty, that's good
I have checked on the MHRA website and now there are 3 different patient information leaflets for Oestrogel, all of them updated on May, 2021. Two PILs are labeled Delpharm (the manufacturer in Drogenbos, Belgium), one has the subtitle Lablabo, meaning the bottle manufacturer is Lablabo (the straight bottle) and one is labeled Rexam (the bottle with a 'neck'). The third PIL wasn't there before and it's labeled LBI which stands for Laboratoire Besins International (Besins own lab in Paris) and it's also labeled Rexam (the old Oestrodose bottle with a 'neck'). That means all 3 presentations are being currently marketed in the UK. Rexam doesn't exist since it has been acquired by Nemera in 2014, so I suppose these are 'old' bottles or someone has forgotten to change the label. This could possibly explain for different experiences with the gel, because although there are very strict regulations regarding production and quality checking, minor differences could still exist and hormones are very powerful molecules and different absorption rates could account for a return of symptoms.
By the way, the Oestrodose leaflet has recently been updated on French gov websites (September, 2021) and it still says 'anhydrous estradiol' instead of 'hemihydrate estradiol'. Maybe it's just a legal or semantic confusion, but nevertheless worth mentioning.
