NOS slams NICE rules on 2nd-line osteo drugs

A leading charity has criticized final guidelines for second-line treatment of osteoporosis released by the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), the agency that advises the UK government on drug coverage, excluding Scotland.

In its final recommedation, the NICE has decided that patients unable to tolerate first-line treatment with generic versions of Merck & Co's Fosamax (alendronate) will have to get worse before they are eligible for branded drugs like Procter & Gamble's Didronel (etidronate) and Actonel (risedronate), co-marketed with Sanofi-Aventis.

According to Nick Rijke, public and external affairs director for the National Osteoporosis Society, "the crux of the issue is that roughly a quarter of patients cannot take generic alendronate. Under these NICE recommendations, those patients would have to get considerably worse before they would be entitled to an alternative treatment. For those patients it is hard to see why L7 ($13.78) a week is too much to ask. Given the immense suffering and financial costs caused by hip fractures that effective treatment could prevent, the logical and moral imperative is to treat individuals with a drug that works."