Lipitor remains England’s biggest seller
pharmafile | April 24, 2006 | News story | Sales and Marketing |Â Â Â
New figures for pharmaceutical sales in England and the rest of the world see the industry continuing to maintain growth, but battles with healthcare payers, generic competitors and R&D productivity all provide significant challenges for the industry.
In England, the top-selling product was once again Pfizer's cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor. Sales grew nearly 4 million pounds (around 11%) compared to the previous year, despite a seven per cent price cut enforced on the industry at the start of 2005.
The country's GPs prescribed nearly 40 million pounds worth of Lipitor in 2005, making it easily the biggest-selling branded medicine, a position mirrored in global revenues, which rose 12% to $12.2 billion.
Newly released statistics from the Department of Health show the total number of prescriptions written in the community in England grew 5% last year, while prescription costs fell 2% overall, thanks to cost savings from cheaper generic and branded drugs.
The NHS made most of these savings in cardiovascular prescribing, with spending falling nearly 13%. Across other areas of prescribing, growth was strongest in products for the endocrine system (dominated by diabetes treatments), with brands such as GSK's Avandia growing strongly over the year.
The country's top five biggest-selling drugs remained the same as in 2004, although GSK's asthma and COPD treatment Seretide climbed to number two to displace Wyeth's ulcer pill Zoton.
Sanofi-Aventis' Plavix overtook Lilly's Zyprexa to gain fourth spot in the table.
Safety concerns relating to diabetes and weight gain seem to have hit Lilly's antipsychotic treatment, but its decline in sales was less severe.
Meanwhile, the government put new restrictions on GP prescribing of Wyeth's antidepressant at the beginning of 2005 because of safety concerns, the brand consequently losing around 15% of its sales.
Celebrex was the drug which suffered most from safety concerns during 2005, with doubts about the Cox-II painkiller class seeing Pfizer's drug lose more than two thirds of its sales in England, dropping to just 20 million pounds.
A number of products posted spectacular growth over the 12-month period, including Merck Sharp & Dohme's hypertension treatment Cozaar, which grew 8%, while Servier's rival drug Coversyl gained around 14%.
Sanofi-Aventis' insulin analogue Lantus continued its rapid rise in popularity, growing by more than 30%, while Pfizer's ophthalmology product Xalatan also performed well.
Boehringer Ingelheim/Pfizer's COPD treatment Spiriva saw sales rise nearly 40% to 48 million. This was still some way behind rival treatments such as GSK's Seretide and AstraZeneca's Symbicort (which grew 15% to 85 million pounds) but its growth was the most marked of any leading respiratory product.
Looking ahead, the government's Prescription Pricing Authority expects further reductions in the overall NHS drugs budget thanks to the imposition of price reductions on generics.
From Spring 2006, 'qualified extended formulary nurses' will be able to prescribe any licensed medicine for any medical condition, with the exception of a limited list of controlled drugs. There are currently over 4,500 extended formulary/supplementary prescriber nurses in the UK, but despite their numbers, the PPA does not expect their new powers to create a surge in prescribing costs or volume.
The global picture
Looking ahead at the global and regional outlook for pharmaceutical sales in 2006 and beyond, IMS Health forecasts that the total worldwide growth will remain at 5-8% over the next five years.
North America and Europe are both expected to maintain the 5-8% growth rate, while Asia Pacific/Africa will generate the highest growth of 9-12%.
Latin America is also expected to perform well over the period, with 7-10% growth expected. Finally Japan, still the world's second biggest market, will see growth remain sluggish at 3-6%.
