Maker Cuts Widely Used AIDS Drug’s Price 20% : Health: Pentamidine’s manufacturer had been under intense pressure to roll back the high cost of its product. Patients would save about $300 a year.
The manufacturer of one of the most widely used AIDS drugs announced Friday that it will cut its price by 20% effective today.
Fujisawa Pharmaceutical Co., the research-based division of Fujisawa USA, said that it will reduce the cost of pentamidine from $99.45 a vial to $79, which would drop the cost for an average patient from about $1,300 a year to $984.
The Deerfield, Ill.-based company, along with other companies that make AIDS therapies, has been under intense pressure in recent years from the medical community, activists, lawmakers and others to reduce the high price of its product.
Pentamidine in its injectable form is used by AIDS patients to treat Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, a life-threatening respiratory infection. It is also used in an aerosol version to prevent the recurrence of the pneumonia in AIDS patients and to stave off a first episode in those infected with the human immunodeficiency virus.
Federal health officials estimate that about 200,000 people in this country are candidates for the drug. It is believed to be second in use among AIDS patients only to the antiviral AZT, which is manufactured by Burroughs Wellcome Co. of Research Triangle Park, N.C.
Earlier this week, the National Institutes of Health declared its National Cancer Institute to be a co-inventor of AZT and announced that it would challenge Burroughs’ exclusive right to manufacture and market the drug, a move that could result in a significant price reduction for AZT.
Those who use pentamidine in its aerosol form typically bear an additional expense of about $1,500 a year to administer the drug. It requires a special spray device that is usually handled by a respiratory therapist.
Fujisawa said that it was acting because cutting the price no longer will jeopardize its AIDS research and other programs.
“Everybody is concerned that patients have access to safe and effective drugs, but that requires appropriate pricing, plus the research,” said Cynthia Yost, the company’s director of marketing. “That’s what we’ve always done. We feel we can do a price reduction today and continue the research.”
But activists, who said that they can import the drug from Germany for $28 a vial (many foreign countries control the prices of drugs), said that the company’s move is a gesture to satisfy critics while maintaining a price that is still too high.
“It’s not enough,” said Steve Wilkinson, deputy director of the PWA (Persons With AIDS) Health Group, of the price cut.
Carisa Cunningham, of AIDS Action Council, agreed. “A price reduction is always welcome, but it’s still a lot of money,” she said.
Pentamidine is designated an orphan drug, a status that provides companies with tax breaks and other incentives for developing drugs to treat rare diseases.
Pentamidine was given orphan drug status at a time when only several hundred patients a year--most of them organ transplant recipients--were developing Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia. “We took on the development . . . when no other drug company wanted to,” said Brian Tambi, president of the company.
Since then, the drug has become important for thousands of AIDS patients, because Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia is the most common opportunistic infection suffered by AIDS patients.
The drug is now recommended as a preventive in those infected individuals who have fewer than 200 T4 helper cells per cubic millimeter of blood, an indication of serious immune system damage. The normal range for T4 cells, the critical immune system cells that are the primary target of HIV, is from 800 to 1,200.
During the last session of Congress, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) wrote amendments to the Orphan Drug Act that would limit excessive profits in such circumstances. The legislation was approved by Congress but vetoed by President Bush.
Waxman applauded the price cut.
“Whenever price reductions on these expensive drugs occur, it’s good news,” he said. “I hope that these price reductions can get more people into preventive treatment--keeping them healthy, instead of just waiting to treat them when they’re sick. We . . . have to do better in paying for these drugs for the people who can’t afford them, and we have to do better in making manufacturers price these drugs within reach.”
Pentamidine’s orphan drug status expires on Oct. 16, which will open the manufacture of the drug to competition. This applies only to injectable pentamidine, which is used as a treatment, not a preventive. But Wilkinson said that patients will be able to buy the drug then at the lowest possible price and find ways to deliver it in aerosol form.
The company’s Yost, however, warned that patients doing so could place themselves in danger, either by administering the wrong dose or by using an inadequate device.
“Our major concern is that different doses and different devices may be used and that the drug may be misused,” she said.
