Higher-Priced Drugs Set To Expand Epilepsy Market

The world antiepilepsy market is served by a small number of drugs, and accounts for just under 10% of total central nervous system sales worldwide. However, the market will expand with the arrival of newer, more expensive treatments, says a new study from Data-monitor's Disease Monitor: Drugs and Disease Management series.

These low sales are surprising, given that epilepsy is the most common neurological disorder and that the leading treatments have been around for over 20 years, says the study. The newer, much higher-priced products entering the market now account for 12.4% of sales, their potential having been held back by their use mainly as adjunctive therapies to traditional products. However, they are steadily gaining approval as monotherapies (65% of epilepsy sufferers are treated with monotherapy) and, given that they are about six times more expensive than traditional products, they will expand the market significantly as they gain wider use.

This process is expected to be slow, given the market's conservative nature. Nevertheless, Datamonitor estimates that a 50% switch from the traditional products to the newer treatments would treble the market's size, to more than $3 billion.