Wyeth stock sinks after study finds its drug can increase
women's risk of breast cancer, heart attack
By Theresa Agovino, Associated Press, 7/9/2002 19:25
NEW YORK (AP) Wyeth shares tumbled more than 24 percent Tuesday after the government
abruptly halted a study which found a hormone therapy that is one of it top-selling drugs can
increase a women's risk of breast cancer, strokes and heart attacks.
The National Institutes of Health halted the three-year study after it found that the risk of continued
use of Prempro, a combination of estrogen and progestin, outweigh the benefits. Over time,
Prempro increased otherwise healthy women's risk of a stroke by 41 percent, a heart attack by 29
percent and breast cancer by 24 percent.
Prempro is a member of Wyeth's Premarin family of hormone replacement therapies, which
generated $2.07 billion of sales last year, making them the company's top selling drugs accounting
for 14 percent of revenues. Wyeth doesn't break out Prempro sales but Lehman Brothers analyst
Trevor Polischuk estimates it accounts for roughly one-third of the hormone replacement group's
revenues with Premarin, which is just estrogen alone, accounting for the lion's share of the rest.
Wyeth stock dropped $11.94 a share, or 24.2 percent, to close at $37.30 in trading Tuesday on
the New York Stock Exchange. The company's shares gained 20 cents in extended trading.
The market is reacting as if the entire franchise is under attack, said Polischuk even though the
government didn't stop a study of estrogen alone. The drugs are used by women undergoing
menopause to reduce side effects such as hot flashes. Polischuk maintains the market is
overreacting because even if Prempro sales were ended, he believes earnings would only fall about
5 percent this year and next.
And he isn't convinced women will categorically stop taking Prempro because there are no
alternative therapies available to them. Instead, he believes women may not take the drug for as
long or switch to Premarin alone.
''Of course this study is an issue but the increase risk of breast cancer and heart attack is marginally
higher and there is just no alternative therapy for these women,'' said Polischuk.
The study's leaders stressed that women shouldn't panic because personal risk is pretty small.
In one year, for every 10,000 women who take the estrogen-progestin combination there will be
eight more breast cancers, eight more strokes and seven more heart attacks and six fewer colon
cancers and five fewer hip fractures compared with 10,000 women who didn't take the pills.
Six million American women use this hormone combination, either for short-term relief of hot
flashes and other menopausal symptoms or because of doctors' longstanding assumptions that
long-term use would prevent heart disease and brittle bones and generally keep women healthier
longer. |
