GLG News by Lipitor Prescribers for Hypercholesterolemia (US)

This article implies that physician's have no justifiable reason for prescribing brand-name drugs. Unfortunately, it's not that simple.

There is a question of bias in this study. It is not prospective, not randomized and not blinded and thus no valid conclusions can be made. The study should be ignored. It will have no impact on sales.

The Medicare drug system was a political ploy. This just confrims it. The private insurers were unwilling to offer Rx coverage before then because they understood the economics of it.

Given the economic pressures on patients, they are now more likely to ask for generic medications than they were in the past.  Given that there are generic versions of several classes of medications, physicians such as me are more likely to comply with a patient's request for a generic than in...

I am a heavy user of ARB's and Tekturna.  This article does not really show anything of significance.  Most practicing physicians have seen much better results and much better tolerability with ARB's than diuretics. I do not think this is going to change prescribing habits of anyone. ...

It is well known that the addition of thiazide diuretic to ACEI or ARB treatment adds about 10 mm Hg reduction on top of the 10 mm Hg reduction provided by the ACEI or ARB agent.  It is expected that blocking renin in the renin angiotensin system with Tekturna would provide a similar result.

I anticipate vytorin and zetia sales will be down substantial when the IMS numbers come out tommorrow, but that this will be only the beginning of a negative trend for these scripts. I list below several reasons why.

TRITON-TIMI 38 study of 13,608 patients with ACS compared prasugrel against clopidogrel, combined with aspirin.  Prasugrel reduced the combined rate of CV death, MI or stroke (12.1% for clopidogrel vs. 9.9% for prasugrel). The benefit came at a cost of increased serious bleeding (1.4%, vs....

The announcement the new trial comparing Lipitor to Crestor  is interesting but not unexpected.  It is timed to end near the end of lipitor's patent. A win- which is likely- will certainly help AZN sell their drug against the much cheaper generic lipitor.

Impressive data on Ranexa in HGBA1c. The result of a decrease of 0.64 vs baseline and 0.43 vs placebo are at first glance underwhelming.  But a closer looks shows that the results are realy quite impressive