Carbapenem Drug Class Shows an Increase in Hospital Inpatient Courses...( Just Over One-Third of All C...),Health

Just Over One-Third of All Carbapenem Courses Are Used as Documented/Confirmed Therapy, According To New Data from Arlington Medical

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MALVERN, Pa., Nov. 6 /PRNewswire/ -- Arlington Medical Resources (AMR), a provider of premier market intelligence for the pharmaceutical and diagnostic imaging industries, finds that in the January -- June 2008 time period, the carbapenem drug class in hospital inpatient courses in Europe has grown seven percent compared to the January -- June 2007 time period. These antibiotics are commonly used to treat lower respiratory infections, systemic infections, abdominal/pelvic infections and GI/biliary infections.

"Among carbapenem antibiotics Merck's Primaxin/Tienam (imipenem/cilastatin) has the largest share of courses (54 percent), followed by AstraZeneca's Merrem/Meronem (meropenem) (36 percent) and Merck's Invanz (ertapenem injectable) (10 percent)," stated Joyce Wedemeyer, product director at AMR. "These shares are consistent with our prior audit for the January -- June 2007 time period."

The newly released European edition of The Hospital Antibiotic Market Guide also finds that just over one-third of all carbapenem courses are used as documented/confirmed therapy. Inpatients treated with a carbapenem course in a documented/confirmed case are most commonly associated with escherichia coli (29 percent of documented courses), pseudomonas aeruginosa (20 percent), methicillin-sensitive staphylococcus aureus (9 percent) and enterococcus faecalis (8 percent).

Why Pharmaceutical Companies Need this Information

The Hospital Antibiotic Market Guide enables pharmaceutical companies to monitor patient shares, costs, infectious disease prevalence and the clinical use of antibiotics in acute care hospitals. In addition, pathogen-level details are available for those inpatient antibiotic drug courses associated with positive microbiological culture results.
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