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Biotech / Medical : VVUS: VIVUS INC. (NASDAQ) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mightycujo who wrote (7520)	4/28/1998 7:57:00 AM
From: g.w. barnard	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23519

to all: i believe colby was the first to say something about this, confirms our discussions. 95% is gigantic, looks like it may take a couple of months before we get back on path: gw WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- Pfizer Inc.'s Viagra grabbed almost 95% of new impotence-drug prescriptions in only its third week on the market. Popular with men because it comes in pill form, Viagra accounted for 94.4% of all new prescriptions written in the "sexual dysfunction disorder" category, according to IMS Health, a healthcare auditor. Viagra charged ahead of the former market leaders, Vivus Inc.'s (VVUS) Muse and Pharmacia & Upjohn Inc.'s (PNU) Caverject, in its second week. Last year's No. 1 impotence treatment, Muse, was left with 3.8% of new prescriptions. Caverject, last year's second-selling treatment, had 1.5%. Viagra is enjoying by far the fastest launch ever of any prescription drug, and patients are already starting to come back for refills. These numbers represent an extraordinarily fast start for the drug, which has only been on the market slightly more than two weeks and costs $10 a pill. Speaking to an overflow crowd at the company's annual meeting last week, Pfizer Chief Executive William Steere cautioned that it was too early to make long-range sales projections, because the company doesn't know what the refill rate will be for the drug. He noted that the drug doesn't work on everyone, so some patients might not come back for refills. Nevertheless, preliminary data from NDC show that some 1,000 to 2,000 patients a day were already coming back for refills of Viagra. -Otesa Middleton; 202-862-6654 Copyright (c) 1998 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.