Medical Marketing and Media - Bextra woes boost rivals as treatment options narrow
THE PAINKILLER Mobic saw sharp gains in new users in the days following Pfizer’s withdrawal of COX-2 drug Bextra.
In the week ending April 8, nearly 25 percent of former Bextra patients switched to Mobic, which is jointly marketed by Abbott Laboratories and Boehringer Ingelheim, according to data from Verispan’s Vector One.
Bear Stearns analyst Rick Wise said in published reports that Abbott can expect a 165 percent growth in sales for Mobic now that Bextra has been eliminated from the arthritis market.
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Abbott licenses Mobic from Boehringer Ingelheim, and the two have marketed the drug aggressively to physicians since the Bextra withdrawal. “We have stepped up our detailing and direct-to-physician efforts,” said John Yonsky, a spokesman for Boehringer Ingelheim. “But we haven’t done much with (consumer) advertising in a while.”
Meanwhile, Pfizer’s Celebrex, the only remaining COX-2 drug on the market, received 24 percent of Bextra’s business by the end of the week of the withdrawal, the data showed.
“We believe the net patient losses and gains from Bextra switches to Celebrex will equalize based on the current trend in the COX-2 class since Vioxx’s withdrawal,” said Lehman Brothers analyst Tony Butler. “Some patients may stop using Celebrex because they are fearful of the class, and some Bextra patients will switch to Celebrex.”
At press time, data was not available to indicate whether former Bextra users might turn to OTC medications as an alternative, but results from a recent study suggested the move could be economical for some patients.
A study published April 15 in in the Journal of Arthritis Care & Research suggested the most cost-effective treatment for arthritis pain is to combine OTC NSAIDs like Aleve, Motrin and Advil with stomach-soothing proton pump inhibitors like Nexium, Prevacid or Prilosec. The study was funded by TAP Pharmaceutical, maker of Prevacid.
But the FDA also called for the revision of information for all OTC NSAIDs to include warnings about potential gastrointestinal and cardiovascular risks, and adverse skin reactions including Stevens Johnson Syndrome.
“Tylenol, Motrin, Bactrim, Dilantin and Allopurinol are just a few of the marketed products known to have been associated with Stevens Johnson Syndrome in rare cases,” Butler noted.
-Stephen McGuire
Copyright CPS Communications May 2005
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