Type 2 diabetes diagnostics/therapeutics market to reach $33B

With the world incidence of diabetes expected to increase exponentially in the coming years, new research shows a rapidly escalating market for diagnostics and therapeutics to manage the disease, with combined sales in the major world markets expected to exceed $33.0 billion by 2016, according to a Kalorama Information report, entitled Diabetes and Diabetic Complications: Major World Markets, third edition.

Monitoring and testing products - which currently include small hand-held monitors plus disposable test strips and cartridges, but is also moving into the newer non-invasive blood glucose assays - show the greatest potential for growth, with 2006 sales ringing up at approximately $18.0 billion. The report projects that, with the increased incidence of the disease - especially an unexpected increase of type 2 diabetes cases in US teenagers and young adults in their 20s - and newer testing modalities, this sector of the market will exceed a value of $25.0 billion by 2016.

The introduction of oral and inhaled insulin products in 2006 should play a major role in invigorating insulin sales through the end of this decade, impacting first the USA, then Japan and European nations. Similarly, oral hypoglycemics, a market underserved for years, will increase annually, albeit on a much smaller scale.