Generic rivals cut sales of Lipitor

Associated Press

TRENTON, N.J.

Sales of cholesterol blockbuster Lipitor plunged by half barely a week after the world’s top-selling drug got its first U.S. generic competition, new data show.

That’s despite an aggressive effort by Lipitor maker Pfizer Inc. to keep patients on its pill, which generated peak sales of $13 billion a year, through patient subsidies and big rebates to insurers.

Lipitor lost patent protection Nov. 30 in the U.S., where the drug was generating about $7.9 billion in annual sales. Two generic versions costing a third less hit the market right away, one made by India’s Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd. and the other an authorized generic, made by Pfizer and sold by its partner, Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Lipitor’s patent loss has been watched across the pharmaceutical industry, where most companies face generic competition, and a big revenue hit, for some of their top drugs over the next few years.

Figures from data firm IMS Health on prescriptions for Lipitor and competing drugs that lower LDL or bad cholesterol, the class called statins, show the number of Lipitor prescriptions filled in the seven days ended Dec. 9, the first full week when generic rivals were available, plunged to 359,235. That’s down from the 724,799 Lipitor prescriptions filled a month earlier, in the week ended Nov. 11.

Lipitor’s share of statin prescriptions dropped to 9.7 percent from 20.9 percent over that period. Its biggest rival among brand-name cholesterol drugs is a newer one, Crestor from Britain’s AstraZeneca PLC, which saw market share hold steady at 12.3 percent amid a new Crestor ad campaign.

The IMS data, released Monday, show nearly 476,000 new prescriptions for generic Lipitor, called atorvastatin, were filled the week ended Dec. 9. Just under 80 percent were for Watson’s generic version.