Update in New Medications for Primary Care

Abstract

E ach year, many new drugs find their way into medical practice. Clinicians must determine which are suitable for primary care practice based on comparative efficacy, safety, and cost. Only a fraction of newly approved drugs each year are novel and relevant for primary care. Most new drugs each year are "me too" drugs within existing categories that have marginally differing properties when compared to currently available drugs. To illustrate this point we searched the FDA database for original new drug approvals, including new molecular entities and new biologics, for 2008 1 . We identified 51 new drug approvals. Twenty-six were significant new dosage forms, 10 were significant new biologicals, 10 were used primarily by specialists, 5 were new diagnostic agents (such as radiologic contrast media), and the remaining 6 were relevant for primary care. All six were "me too" drugs. Not a single new drug in 2008 was novel and relevant. Therefore, we elected a different approach this year and identified drugs in the pipeline that are novel, have the potential to be relevant for primary care, and have generated substantial interest in the medical community. To develop a list of candidate drugs, we queried clinical pharmacists that consult for our institutional pharmacy and therapeutics committees, performed an internet search of lay media reports, and reviewed the following journals from