New guidelines for keeping cholesterol in check are likely to dramatically boost sales of statins — with a doubling to an estimated 33 million statin patients — but it won't cut into sales of non-statin cholesterol-controlling drugs, at least for now, experts say.
The American Heart Association's guidelines, updated this week for the first time in a decade, recommend that doctors, when prescribing statins, look at a full range of each patient's health and lifestyle issues, rather than using preset cholesterol levels.
The Pharma Letter, an industry publication, is predicting that statin sales should double thanks to the new guidelines. But analysts say most of the growth in sales will be in cheaper generics, with little benefit to the big pharmaceutical firms.
An investment research note from Cowen and Company said the firm will be "closely monitoring" how physicians prescribe statins and non-statins going forward.
But the boost in statins potentially could be a problem for non-statin drugs that are designed specifically to lower the amount of LDL cholesterol.
"I read the new guidelines as a negative for any drugs that aren't statins," Jon LeCroy, an analyst with MKM Partners, told Reuters. Still, LeCroy said the effect will not be immediate: "It will probably take another year before the Merck drugs feel it."
Merck's cholesterol-inhibiting drug Zetia, combined with a similar drug Vytorin, has annual sales of more than $4 billion, 10 percent of the company's revenue.
"We do not foresee a significant business impact to Merck based on these guidelines," said Merck spokeswoman Pam Eisele. "We continue to see strong need for our products in the market."
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