Alcohol and opioid dependence medications: Prescription trends, overall and by physician specialty

Abstract

Over the past decade, advances in addiction neurobiology have led to the approval of new medications to treat alcohol and opioid dependence. This study examined data from the IMS National Prescription Audit (NPA) Plus™ database of retail pharmacy transactions to evaluate trends in U.S. retail sales and prescriptions of FDA-approved medications to treat substance use disorders. Data reveal that prescriptions for alcoholism medications grew from 393,000 in 2003 ($30 million in sales) to an estimated 720,000 ($78 million in sales) in 2007. The growth was largely driven by the introduction of acamprosate in 2005, which soon became the market leader ($35 million in sales). Prescriptions for the two buprenorphine formulations increased from 48,000 prescriptions ($5 million in sales) in the year of their introduction (2003) to 1.9 million prescriptions ($327 million in sales) in 2007. While acamprosate and buprenorphine grew rapidly after market entry, overall substance abuse retail medication sales remain small relative to the size of the population that could benefit from treatment and relative to sales for other medications, such as antidepressants. The extent to which substance dependence medications will be adopted by physicians and patients, and marketed by industry, remains uncertain.

Integration and Sustainability of Alcohol Screening, Brief Intervention, and Pharmacotherapy in Primary Care Settings

“…An estimate from retail sales data now 10 years old suggested that, at most, approximately 9% of the population needing alcoholism treatment received the equivalent of a single prescription in 1 year (Mark et al, 2009), and many of these prescriptions were written by psychiatrists.…”

Acamprosate Produces Its Anti-Relapse Effects Via Calcium

“…In 2004, it was approved by the FDA for the maintenance of abstinence from alcohol in detoxified alcohol-dependent patients. A recent survey found that acamprosate is now the most widely prescribed medication for the treatment of alcoholism in the United States of America (Mark et al, 2009). …”

Repositioning an Old Anti-Alcoholism Drug: Disulfiram as a Selective, Effective and Economical Anticancer Agent

“…Additionally, DSF itself is a very inexpensive drug. Its current FDA-approved form for treating alcoholism, manufactured under the trade name Antabuse®, is an oral tablet and costs on average only $78 per prescription as of 2007 [30]. In contrast, many cancer drugs can cost thousands of dollars per year-for example, goserelin acetate, an FDAapproved drug for the treatment of breast and prostate cancer can cost over $5,000 for two years [31].…”