By
Frank E. Goldman
,
PharmD.
Sales of prescription drug climbed 5.1% to $300 billion in 2009, continuing a 50-year trend where the annual growth rate only dipped below 5% three times.
To put that number in perspective, the cost of fighting the Iraq war, which began in 2003, will reach $900 billion by the end of the current budget year (Sept. 2010).
Fueling the growth of domestic drug sales was a 7.5% rise in demand for specialty pharmaceuticals for treating complex, chronic conditions that make up 21% of U.S. market value.
Prescriptions dispensed through retail channels, such as pharmacies, mail-order and long-term care facilities, grew 2.1% - twice as fast as the previous year - to 3.9 billion prescriptions.
Tempering the total dollars spent on U.S. prescriptions was a rise in the use of less-expensive, generic medicines. In 2009, those drugs accounted for 75% of all dispensed prescriptions, up 57% from five years earlier. Despite their low cost, generics still accounted for $74 billion in 2009 sales.
The number of generic prescriptions dispensed in the United States increased 5.9% in 2009. Branded drugs, meanwhile, fell by 7.6%.
The shift toward generics is likely to accelerate by 2012, when several major products, including the world's two biggest-selling medicines - the cholesterol- fighter, Lipitor, and the anticoagulant, Plavix - face competition from generics.
Antipsychotic drugs remain the nation's top revenue-producing class of medicine with $14.6 billion in sales.
Acid reflux drugs, such as AstraZeneca's Nexium, were the second-biggest therapeutic class by sales at $13.6 billion.
Lipid regulators, which include cholesterol and triglyceride drugs, declined 10% to $13.6 billion. The reason? A majority of cholesterol drugs are now available as generics.
Higher growth than the prior year is notable and underscores the resilience of pharmacotherapy in today's healthcare equation. |