Global Pain Market "Will Fragment"

The world market for pain products was worth around $2 billion in 1995, representing only around 2% of the global drug market because of the essentially generic nature of its products, reports a new study from Datamonitor, available through the Marketletter.

It forecasts that for future success, products and brands will have to be linked to specific areas of pain, for example lower back pain (for which Knoll's chymodiactin is specifically indicated), and chronic cancer pain. Lessons on utilizing marketing strategies to differentiate products which are largely generic can be learned from the over-the-counter sector, it says.