药房统计：降血脂药竞争加剧
Pharma Box Office: Cholesterol Busters
Here’s the first installment of Pharma Box Office, a Health Blog feature that will offer insights on the sale and marketing of prescription drugs.
Pfizer is feeling the sands shift in the market for statins, the popular cholesterol drugs.
Generic versions of previous brand-name rivals to Pfizer’s flagship Lipitor have given patients, doctors and insurers a cheaper choice for controlling cholesterol. They’re taking full advantage of the options, to Lipitor’s detriment.
The big insurer WellPoint upped the ante by offering four free months of simvastatin, the generic version of Merck’s Zocor, to patients in some of its health plans as an incentive to switch from brand-name cholesterol drugs, including WellPoint’s preferred brand-name statin Lipitor. That’s probably not what Pfizer had in mind when the company negotiated for that prime position with WellPoint.
The pressure on Lipitor is intense. Lipitor’s share of new statin prescriptions in the U.S. stood at 42% during the week ending March 9th, according to the most recent data available from Wolters Kluwer Health. Simvastatin claimed 28% of new prescriptions. And 10% went to lovastatin, the generic version of the first statin sold as Mevacor by Merck.
For perspective, take a look back at prescriptions during the same week last March, before Merck’s Zocor went generic as simvastatin and Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Pravachol became generic as pravastatin. In those good old days for Pfizer, Lipitor was cholesterol king with 51% of new statin prescriptions. Zocor, then Merck’s top seller, had 20% and generic lovastatin had 11%.
Pfizer, according to this AP story, acknowledges that Lipitor may never regain its lost market share. But the erosion can be halted, says Walt Johnston, a Pfizer marketing exec for Lipitor. “We are in a dogfight,” he says.
But the bleeding may not stop soon, despite Pfizer’s best efforts. We checked in with Louis Teichholz, chief of cardiology at Hackensack University Medical Center. Last summer, he predicted that simvastatin would have a good run, as it has. “Many hospitals such as ours have done automatic subsitutions, if someone comes in on another statin they get switched to an equivalent dose of simvastatin,” Teichholz says. The exceptions would be for patients who need high doses of more powerful statins, such as Lipitor or Crestor, to reach their cholesterol goals.
As for the Lipitor patients he sees outside the hospital, Teichholz says many ask him “Can I switch?” to a generic? The answer, he says, is generally yes.
Even so, Lipitor has held up better in terms of sales, the category that matters most to Pfizer these days. For the two weeks ended March 9th, domestic sales of Lipitor were $345 million, down just 2% from $354 million during the same period a year ago, according to data from Wolters Kluwer. An important reason for the moderate decline: Pfizer raised the price of Lipitor by about 5% in January.
Pharma Box Office: Cholesterol Busters
Here’s the first installment of Pharma Box Office, a Health Blog feature that will offer insights on the sale and marketing of prescription drugs.
Pfizer is feeling the sands shift in the market for statins, the popular cholesterol drugs.
Generic versions of previous brand-name rivals to Pfizer’s flagship Lipitor have given patients, doctors and insurers a cheaper choice for controlling cholesterol. They’re taking full advantage of the options, to Lipitor’s detriment.
The big insurer WellPoint upped the ante by offering four free months of simvastatin, the generic version of Merck’s Zocor, to patients in some of its health plans as an incentive to switch from brand-name cholesterol drugs, including WellPoint’s preferred brand-name statin Lipitor. That’s probably not what Pfizer had in mind when the company negotiated for that prime position with WellPoint.
The pressure on Lipitor is intense. Lipitor’s share of new statin prescriptions in the U.S. stood at 42% during the week ending March 9th, according to the most recent data available from Wolters Kluwer Health. Simvastatin claimed 28% of new prescriptions. And 10% went to lovastatin, the generic version of the first statin sold as Mevacor by Merck.
For perspective, take a look back at prescriptions during the same week last March, before Merck’s Zocor went generic as simvastatin and Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Pravachol became generic as pravastatin. In those good old days for Pfizer, Lipitor was cholesterol king with 51% of new statin prescriptions. Zocor, then Merck’s top seller, had 20% and generic lovastatin had 11%.
Pfizer, according to this AP story, acknowledges that Lipitor may never regain its lost market share. But the erosion can be halted, says Walt Johnston, a Pfizer marketing exec for Lipitor. “We are in a dogfight,” he says.
But the bleeding may not stop soon, despite Pfizer’s best efforts. We checked in with Louis Teichholz, chief of cardiology at Hackensack University Medical Center. Last summer, he predicted that simvastatin would have a good run, as it has. “Many hospitals such as ours have done automatic subsitutions, if someone comes in on another statin they get switched to an equivalent dose of simvastatin,” Teichholz says. The exceptions would be for patients who need high doses of more powerful statins, such as Lipitor or Crestor, to reach their cholesterol goals.
As for the Lipitor patients he sees outside the hospital, Teichholz says many ask him “Can I switch?” to a generic? The answer, he says, is generally yes.
Even so, Lipitor has held up better in terms of sales, the category that matters most to Pfizer these days. For the two weeks ended March 9th, domestic sales of Lipitor were $345 million, down just 2% from $354 million during the same period a year ago, according to data from Wolters Kluwer. An important reason for the moderate decline: Pfizer raised the price of Lipitor by about 5% in January.