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Monday July 31, 8:05 am Eastern Time
Company Press Release
SOURCE: Duramed Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Duramed's Cenestin(R) Added to Three Additional Formularies
* Priority Health, Physicians Insurance Plan, and Health Plan of the Redwoods' Combined Coverage Equals Nearly 500,000 Lives * Continued Progress by Duramed's Managed Care Team
CINCINNATI, July 31 /PRNewswire/ -- Duramed Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: DRMD - news) announced today that its Cenestin® (synthetic conjugated estrogens, A) Tablets have been added to the formularies of three health maintenance organizations: Priority Health, Physicians Insurance Corporation (Physicians Plus), and Health Plan of the Redwoods.
Priority Health has approximately 282,000 members in 27 counties in northern and western Michigan. The plan received the state's top ranking in a 1999 survey. Physicians Plus is comprised of 128,000 lives in central and southern Wisconsin, making it one of Wisconsin's largest health maintenance organizations. Health Plan of the Redwoods serves 85,000 residents in the California counties of Sonoma, Marin, and Mendocino; it contracts with more than 1,600 businesses, public entities, school districts, and union benefit trusts.
Duramed President and Chief Executive Officer E. Thomas Arington commented, ``Cenestin's inclusion on three additional formularies exemplifies Duramed's progress in the managed care segment. Such inclusion demonstrates that an increasing number of healthcare plans realize the importance of offering women the opportunity to choose Cenestin, a plant-derived product, as an alternative to Premarin®(a), a product derived from pregnant mare urine, when deciding on estrogen replacement therapy.''
The addition of Cenestin to these -- and other -- formularies will increase product availability and distribution, and assist Duramed in achieving its objective of giving each American woman a plant-based alternative in the conjugated estrogens category.
Arington concluded, ``Three new doors have been opened to Cenestin. We have the product of choice in treating symptoms of menopause, and each day increasing numbers of women are being given the option of this state-of-the- art therapy.''
About Duramed Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Duramed Pharmaceuticals develops, manufactures, and markets prescription drug products. The company's business strategy emphasizes products with attractive market opportunities and potentially limited competition due to technological barriers to entry, focusing on women's health and the hormone replacement therapy market. On March 24, 1999, the FDA approved the company's first branded product, Cenestin® (synthetic conjugated estrogens, A) Tablets, for the treatment of moderate-to-severe vasomotor symptoms associated with menopause.
Duramed's containment manufacturing facility for the production of hormones distinguishes the company from most competitors. The facility incorporates enclosed product flow and state-of-the-art environmental controls to ensure purity, stability, and tablet uniformity for Cenestin and other hormone products. While Duramed's primary focus will be solid oral dose hormones, the company's other areas of concentration-controlled release technology and oncology-continue to represent attractive market opportunities.
The company's stock is traded on Nasdaq using the symbol DRMD. Additional information about the company can be found on the World Wide Web at www.duramed.com and www.cenestin.com
(a) Premarin is a trademark of Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories.
Like all estrogen drug products, CENESTIN® Tablets should not be used in women with known or suspected pregnancy, breast cancer, or estrogen-dependent neoplasia, undiagnosed abnormal genital bleeding, active thrombophlebitis, or thromboembolic disorders. Estrogens have been reported to increase the risk of endometrial carcinoma in postmenopausal women with an intact uterus. The most common adverse events reported in clinical experience with CENESTIN included headache, insomnia, asthenia, nervousness, paresthesia, and depression. For additional information on CENESTIN, please see full prescribing information.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) encourages companies to disclose forward-looking information so that investors can better understand a company's future prospects and make informed investment decisions. Due to changing market conditions, product competition, the nature of product development and regulatory approval processes, the achievement of forward- looking statements contained in this press release are subject to risks and uncertainties. For further details and a discussion of these risks and uncertainties, see Duramed's SEC filings, including its annual report on Form 1O-K.
SOURCE: Duramed Pharmaceuticals, Inc. |
