The US pharmaceutical market rose 7.5% to $82.5 billion in 1994, the slowest growth reported for the industry in over 10 years, according to IMS America's Class-of-Trade Analysis 1994. Reasons for this sluggishness, says IMS, include continuing price pressures on prescription drugs, fewer new blockbusters, rapid generic erosion of branded drugs with patent loss, and a dramatic rise in the purchasing power of managed care.
Sales of branded drugs rose 6.2%, and generics were up 29%. Price rises overall were under 3% overall, and most growth was due to volume and new products. Eli Lilly's Prozac (fluoxetine), the fastest-growing existing product, became the tenth most prescribed drug. New successes included Janssen's Risperdal (risperidone), which became the market leader in its class in just 10 months, and Glaxo's Serevent (salmeterol), which also gained a strong market share in its first year.
Only six weeks after patent expiry, two of every three new prescriptions were dispensed with generics for SmithKline Beecham's Tagamet (cimetidine), Syntex' Naprosyn and Anaprox (naproxen sodium) and Upjohn's Xanax (alprazolam), IMS reports; in the past, generic erosion at this level took about four years. While generic cimetidine did not impede the success of Glaxo's Zantac (ranitidine), it passed Tagamet in dollar terms in the fourth quarter of 1994. Procter & gamble's Aleve was the only naproxen product to show any significant growth last year.
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