The Leading Antidepressant Firms will Face Strong Competition due to Generics by 2010

Dublin (PRWEB) February 3, 2006 -- Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c32063) has announced the addition of Impact of Generics on the Antidepressant Market to their offering.

The depression therapy market is one of the largest in the world. Several antidepressants have achieved blockbuster status. Although the market for antidepressants continues to grow, the rate of growth has slowed, in part because of generics competition. By 2010, the market-leading antidepressants will all face generics competition, at least in the United States. In this report, Decision Resources examine the current antidepressant market and discuss the effect that increasing generics competition will have.

Business Implications
Depression is a major health problem. The World Health Organization (WHO) predicts that by 2020 depression will be the second- largest cause of the global health burden. The disease is the central nervous system (CNS) disorder with the highest prevalence -- about 40 million diagnosed cases in the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, and Japan. In the United States, there are 15 million cases of depression. The diagnosis rate for depression should continue to rise as public awareness of the disease increases.

Antidepressant sales constitute the largest segment of the CNS market, approximately 24%. In 2004, global sales of antidepressant agents exceeded $15 billion. Japan is currently a relatively unimportant market for antidepressants, constituting about 5% of the global market; Europe (19%) and especially the United States (71%) account for most of the global sales of antidepressants.

Global sales of branded antidepressants exceeded $14 billion in 2004; U.S. sales totaled $9.9 billion. Venlafaxine (Wyeth's Effexor) and sertraline (Pfizer's Zoloft) led the global market, each generating sales of $3.3 billion. Nevertheless, as a result of the expiration
of patents covering some of the leading antidepressant drugs, the market share of generic antidepressants increased from 20% in 2000 to 42% (by volume) in 2004, a trend we expect to continue.

Over the next five years, generic forms of nearly all the leading branded antidepressants will emerge. Sertraline's patent, for
example, expires in 2005-2006 in key major markets, and challenges to patents covering venlafaxine and escitalopram (Forest/Lundbeck's Lexapro) will likely lead to the availability of generic forms of these products in the United States by 2009 and 2010, respectively.

As a result of patient expiries, we expect the value of the U.S. antidepressant market to decline by 2.1% per year between 2004 and 2009 and the market share of generics to increase about 75% by volume. (This decline may be lessened if Wyeth succeeds in upholding its key patents on venlafaxine.) The impact on the global market will be less pronounced but still significant.

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c32063

Laura Wood
Senior Manager
Research and Markets
Fax: +353 1 4100 980

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