Significant Generic Erosion Will Cause Sales of Dyslipidemia Drugs to Decline by $3.6 Billi...( Statins Will Continue to Dominate...),Health

Statins Will Continue to Dominate Market Despite Patent Expiries and Increased Use of Fixed-Dose Combinations, According to a New Report from

Decision Resources

WALTHAM, Mass., March 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Decision Resources, one of the world's leading research and advisory firms for pharmaceutical and healthcare issues, finds that sales of dyslipidemia therapies will decline from $28 billion in 2006 to $24.4 billion in 2016 owing to significant generic erosion, triggered particularly by the 2006 U.S. patent expiry of Merck's Zocor and the U.S. and European patent expiries of Pfizer's Lipitor beginning in 2010.

The new Pharmacor report entitled Dyslipidemia finds that statins will continue to dominate the dyslipidemia drug market by claiming more than 70 percent patient share in the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom and Japan. However, the sales share of statins will decline from $21 billion in 2006 to $7.8 billion in 2016 owing to generic erosion and greater use of fixed-dose combination therapies that offer dual modes of action and/or modulate high-density lipoprotein (HDL) in addition to low- density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol. The fixed-dose combinations class will capture 30 percent of the dyslipidemia market in 2016.

The report also finds that physicians will increasingly prescribe treatment aimed at aggressive LDL targets in high-risk patients, which will benefit more potent agents such as AstraZeneca's Crestor and add-on therapies such as Merck/Schering-Plough's Zetia/Ezetrol. Aggressive treatment will also boost uptake of novel LDL-lowering therapies such as lapaquistat, Takeda's novel squalene synthase inhibitor, which will be used in polypharmacy regimens.

"Although statins are entrenched as the first-line therapy of choice for the vast majority of dyslipidemia patients and have achieved success in lowering both LDL and the risk of heart attacks, the prevalence o
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