Lipitor is 2005's bestselling drug

Lipitor is 2005's bestselling drug

FRANKFURT-The 25 top-selling medicines last year targeted persistent illnesses such as high cholesterol, stomach ulcers and depression that drugmakers can market to patients in television commercials and magazine ads. Cheaper competition may hurt some of these products this year.

Pfizer Inc.'s cholesterol-cutting Lipitor was the best-selling treatment for the fifth year in a row, bringing in $12.2 billion in 2005, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Plavix, the clot treatment sold by Sanofi-Aventis SA and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., rose to No. 2 with $6.3 billion in sales. Advair, a GlaxoSmithKline Plc asthma drug, had sales of $5.5 billion, pushing it up a spot to third.

Drugmakers spent $4 billion in 2004 to pitch consumer medicines to treat illnesses that need to be controlled long-term, including high cholesterol and high blood pressure. Loss of patent protection of several drugs to treat these chronic ailments, such as Merck & Co.'s Zocor cholesterol medicine, means some of the products in the top 25 list in 2005 will drop off this year, analysts said.

"What we're seeing is the big successes of the late 1990s are now getting hit,'' Marie-Helene Leopold, an analyst at Societe Generale in Paris, said in telephone interview.

Pfizer's Lipitor and Norvasc, the fourth-best selling medicine with $4.7 billion in revenue, may soon face generic challenges.

AstraZeneca Plc used the "Purple Pill" marketing campaign to switch patients to the Nexium ulcer medicine when its Prilosec lost sales to generic competitors. Nexium sales rose 19 percent in 2005 to $4.6 billion, making it the fifth-best seller.

High-priced drugs can only keep their sales with the help of patent protection. The loss of a patent for one drug may mean loss of sales for a whole class of drugs as governments and health insurers get more aggressive about switching patients to cheaper medications.

The rankings are based on 2005 sales figures gathered by Bloomberg from company releases. Sales of drugs sold by multiple companies are combined. The table excludes product sales by Japanese companies.

Lipitor sales growth may be slowing. Revenue from the product rose 3 percent in the last quarter of 2005, down from 20-percent growth in the first two quarters.

It faces competition not only from rivals such as Whitehouse Station, New Jersey-based Merck's Zocor and New York-based Bristol-Myers's Pravachol, but also from their generic copies that will probably enter the market this year.

"Pfizer, in particular, is really going to suffer," said Martyn Link, a senior life sciences analyst at Wood Mackenzie Consultants Ltd. "In 2004, Pfizer had five drugs in the top 25, in 2009 they'll only have one."

Last week, New York-based Pfizer said revenue from Lipitor would exceed $13 billion this year. The company plans to keep sales growing this year through an advertising campaign designed to focus consumers on the heart benefits of lowering cholesterol.

The introduction of a generic drug can cut sales of a branded medicine by as much as 70 percent as patients and payers switch to the cheaper copies. For example, sales of Pfizer's Neurontin for epilepsy sales dropped to $639 million in 2005 from $2,723 million in 2004. Bloomberg

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