MONEY.
In this morning's news, there's an item about a new type of drug that was developed by a pharmaceutial company. It's a potassium channel opener--there are no other AEDs with this mechanism of action available.
GlaxoSmithKline paid the drug developers, are you ready?, $125 million to add this drug, retigabine, to their portfolio. The deal could be worth almost a BILLION dollars to the developer, based on worldwide sales. And, since they're splitting the sales profits with GSK, that means they're predicting the revenue from this drug is going to be $2 BILLION.
Here's the fine print from the results of a clinical trial in 2007.
"The multicenter, randomized,
double-blind, placebo-controlled trial showed retigabine reduced monthly seizure
frequency by 23% reduction for 600 mg/day, 29% for 900 mg/day, and 35% for 1200
mg per day, vs 13% for placebo."
The press releases of a more recent study don't identify the reduction in seizures that occurred, except to say that they're statistically significant.
But 27% percent of patients who took the drug withdrew from the study due to side events, which included
dizziness, sleepiness, fatigue, confusion, joint pain, lack of coordination, blurred
vision, tremor, and nausea.
So it reduced seizures by 23%, but 27% of patients asked to be taken off it.
And that's worth TWO BILLION DOLLARS!
It turns my stomach.
