US drug sales growth slows to 1.3%

Annual US prescription sales growth was just 1.3% in 2008, reaching $291.5 billion, according to IMS Health, a leading provider of market  intelligence to the pharmaceutical and health care industries.  Dispensed prescription volume in the USA grew at a 0.9% pace, it added.

Factors influencing the market's slower growth in 2008 included higher  demand for less-expensive generic medicines, lower new product sales  and reduced consumer demand due to the economic turndown.

Across the major therapeutic classes, the biggest sales came from  antipsychotics, increasing 11.5% to $14.6 billion. Lipid regulators, or  cholesterol-lowerers, were the most widely-dispensed retail prescription  medications on a volume basis in 2008, but second by value reaching a  total of $14.6 billion, down 11.6% on 2007. This was followed by proton  pump inhibitors at $13.9 billion, seeing a decline of 2.1%, and drugs  for seizure disorders, totaling $1.3 billion, a rise of 10.8%.