SmithKline's Avandia Prescriptions Top 11,000 a Week, NDC Says
Bloomberg News
July 14, 1999, 7:32 p.m. ET
SmithKline's Avandia Prescriptions Top 11,000 a Week, NDC Says
London, July 14 (Bloomberg) -- SmithKline Beecham Plc's
diabetes pill Avandia captured more than 11,200 new prescriptions
in the week ended Sunday, according to NDC Health Information
Services.
That gave Avandia, which won U.S. approval in May, about
2.6 percent of the market for new diabetes prescriptions, said
NDC's DirectRx Service, which tracks prescription sales at U.S.
pharmacies. The drug has had more than 45,000 new prescriptions
and refills since its June introduction, NDC said.
Avandia is part of a new class of diabetes pills that help
some people manage their disease without insulin shots. Avandia
is seen as a successor to a similar medicine, Rezulin. Rezulin is
a Sankyo Co. drug that Warner-Lambert Co. markets.
About 1.6 million people have tried Rezulin since the drug's
1997 introduction. In some cases, the drug worked where other
medicines had failed. That spurred demand for Rezulin. The drug's
sales rose 78 percent to $748 million in 1998.
Analysts have said 1998 sales likely will be the peak for
Rezulin, which has been linked to fatalities and cases of serious
liver damage. The FDA has several times added restrictions to the
drug's warning label.
Avandia and another Rezulin rival, Takeda Chemical
Industries Ltd.'s Actos, so far seem less likely to cause liver
damage than Rezulin is.
New prescriptions for Rezulin fell to about 29,450 in the
week ended Sunday from about 33,230 in the week ended May 2,
according to NDC. The drug's share of the new prescription market
fell to 6.8 percent from 7.8 percent.
Analysts expect the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to
approve Actos within the next week. Eli Lilly & Co., one of the
world's top-sellers of insulin, will help Takeda market Actos in
the U.S.
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