First shots fired in the cholesterol wars
It looks like there is a potential battle brewing in the multi-billion dollar prescription cholesterol market. Vytorin has fired the first shot with the results of head to head clinical studies against market leader Lipitor. A three-quarter page ad in todays Wall Street Journal with the headline saying that "Vytorin was clinically proven to lower bad cholesterol more than Lipitor alone". They also show a graph that indicates that Vytorin lowered bad cholesterol by 53% compared to 45% for Lipitor alone. It seems the battle lines are drawn.
Merck and Schering-Plough are promoting the head to head clinical studies on their health care professional and consumer websites as well. The key question is will it be enough for patients to ask their physician or will Vytorin become a second line statin for people whose high cholesterol doesn't respond to treatment with Lipitor? I believe that this battle is going to be fought in the doctors office not with patients. Pfizer has done a great job in promoting Lipitor with physicians. Pfizer is promoting clinical studies that show that Lipitor may reduce the risk of major CV events by almost half. In addition Pfizer is firing back with three key points; lower LDL reductions, outcomes such as stroke reduction of 48% and nonfatal MI reduction of 45%, safety and experience and finally health care access "available for 94% of patients with managed care coverage.
Will these work? Hard to tell, Pfizer tried some
of these tactics when Viagra faced competition
from Cialis and Levitra and they didn't work that
well but the ED market is mostly a
patient/consumer driven market. Pfizer does a
great job of bundling their products to managed
care plans and that might give them a slight edge
but the real question is will patients ask to be
switched and will physicians switch patients? My
guess is that patients currently taking Lipitor
and responding to treatment will not ask to to
switch to Vytorin. Why should they? Either way it
will be interesting to see this battle unfold in
the multi-billion dollar cholesterol war. Pfizer
I am sure will not allow this attack to go
unchallenged.
A
key message to HCP's on Lipitor
As
you can see Pfizer is hitting back to Vytorin's
challenge with this
message on the Lipitor HCP
site.