Serzone Priced At Discount To SSRIs In USA

Bristol-Myers Squibb's new antidepressant drug Serzone (nefazodone), which was approved in the USA, its first market, at the end of 1994, will be introduced within a few weeks at a 10%-20% discount to its major competitors, the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors.

Nefazodone will have an average wholesale price of $1.66 per daily dose (all doses), which compares to $2.16/day for Eli Lilly's Prozac (fluoxetine 20mg), $1.94/day for Pfizer's Zoloft (sertraline 50mg), and $1.82/day for SmithKline Beecham's Paxil (paroxetine 20mg). Wyeth-Ayerst's Effexor (venlafaxine), which is similar to nefazodone in activity, costs around $2 based on a starting dose of 75mg in two divided doses, reports the Pink Sheet. B-MS sets great store by Serzone, and predicts that it may become the company's next blockbuster drug, despite the intense competition in the antidepressant market. The total US market for antidepressants is estimated at $2.5 billion, with SSRIs accounting for $2 billion of this total (Prozac alone achieves sales of over $1.3 billion a year).

B-MS will promote Serzone as an antidepressant with fewer side effects than the SSRIs, particularly with regard to the associated incidence of sexual dysfunction (Marketletter January 9). Although the company has no data from actual head-to-head comparisons with the SSRIs to support its claim of a lower incidence of sexual dysfunction, historical data is supportive of the claim.