Metabolic means

This is one of the three means, with pharmacological and immunological, that make a product a medicine rather than a device under EU rules. Manufacturers of substance-based devices have to show that their principal mode of action is not metabolic, and MDCG 2022-5 sets out how to reason about it.

‘Metabolic means’ is understood as an action of a substance or its metabolites which involves an alteration, including stopping, starting or changing the rate, extent or nature of a biochemical process, whether physiological or pathological, participating in, and available for, function of the human body.

MDCG 2022-5 Rev.1, Section 1.2.2, Definitions of pharmacological, immunological, metabolic means