Learn English – the difference between ‘dose’ and ‘dosage’

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I found that these two words are synonyms and share the same meaning: the amount of a medicine. Can I use both of them in the same sentence?

for example:

The highest dosage of drug A increased […] while the middle dose did not.

Best Answer

They can often be used interchangeably. A 'dose' is a countable unit of it (1 spoonfuls, etc). The uncountable 'dosage' is what the doctor prescribes.

The following extract from MedLinguistic explains the difference:

  • Despite repeated emphasis upon the distinction between dose and dosage, these two terms continue to baffle us. As we’ve often been told, dose refers to a specified amount of medication taken at one time.

  • In the preferred use of dosage, however, the term refers to the administering of a specific amount, number, and frequency of doses over a specified period of time. Dosage implies duration: a “dosage regimen” is a treatment plan for administering a drug over a period of time.