Lipitor, Nexium still top-selling brands

PR Log (Press Release) – May 17, 2009 – Here's something for you competitive types, the ones who like to keep track of whose drug is bigger than whose. (You know who you are.) Last week's report  from IMS Health on stagnating drug sales also included some lovely little nuggets on top brands by prescription and by dollar volume. Here we go.

The five drugs that accounted for the most dispensed scrips include four generics and just one branded product--and that brand saw scrips drop. Here's the list, with the number of scrips for 2008 and 2007 for comparison's sake.


Hydrocodone with acetaminophen, generic painkiller, 124 million scrips in 2008, up from 119 million in 2007.


Lisinopril, generic blood pressure med, 75.5 million, up from 70.5 million in 2007

Simvastatin, generic cholesterol remedy, 66.7 million, up from 47.7 million in 2007

Levothyroxine sodium, generic thyroid hormone, 61.4 million, up from 55 million in 2007

Lipitor, Pfizer's branded cholesterol med, 57.9 million, down from 65.1 million in 2007


Now for the dollar figures. As you can imagine, all the top-dollar meds are brand-name drugs, simply because branded meds are so much more expensive. Here are the top five.


Lipitor, Pfizer, cholesterol, $7.8 billion, down from $8.1 billion in 2007

Nexium, AstraZeneca, heartburn/gastric reflux, $5.9 billion, up from $5.5 billion in 2007

Plavix, Bristol-Myers Squibb, blood thinner, $4.9 billion, up from $3.9 billion in 2007

Advair Diskus, GlaxoSmithKline, asthma/COPD, $4.4 billion, up from $4.3 billion in 2007

Seroquel, AstraZeneca, atypical antipsychotic, $3.9 billion, up from $3.5 billion in 2007

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