Obesity Drug Sales Show Strong Rise In January

Retail sales of obesity therapies have more than doubled in the USA inJanuary 1997 compared to the same month a year earlier, reflecting strong demand for drugs in the wake of renewed interest in obesity as a therapeutic category.

Health care consulting and communications company Scott-Levin reports that obesity drug sales totaled $64.2 million in January. This doubling in sales by value was mirrored by a twofold increase in volume; there were 2.3 million total prescriptions for obesity products in January, up from 1.1 million a year earlier, according to Scott-Levin's Source Prescription Audit, a retail pharmacy monitoring service. The popular phen/fen combination (phentermine and fenfluramine) accounted for 74% of the retail prescriptions dispensed in this market.

Generic phentermine took a 37.2% share of the market in the month, while branded phentermine products such as Teva's Adipex-P and SmithKline Beecham's Fastin accounted for just 3.4% and 1.6%, respectively. Wyeth-Ayerst's Pondimin (fenfluramine; originally developed by France's Servier) seized a 30.2% share of the total market, which represented an 80% increase over the previous January.