Pain products generated global sales of nearly US$40 billion in 2003 (including anaesthetics and antimigraine agents) and this is expected to double by 2010. Pain is associated with a broad range of diseases and is often poorly diagnosed and treated. There has been tremendous research activity into the treatment of pain and many types of pain remain relatively unexplored.
Approximately 26 million patients worldwide (10 million in the US, 3 million in Europe and 1.5 million in Japan) suffer from some form of neuropathic pain, spending an estimated US$2.5 billion globally in 2003. There remains a high unmet clinical need within neuropathic pain as current therapies such as antidepressants are under-utilised and many patients in Europe have inadequate pain management programmes and limited access to opioids.
Global pain market
It is difficult to determine the exact amount spent on the management of pain as several classes of drug are used "off-label" in the treatment of pain such as antidepressants and anti-epileptics.
We anticipate that by 2010, sales of neuropathic pain drugs will double to US$5.5 billion. Sales will be driven by the launch of novel therapeutic drugs that specifically target sub-sets of neuropathic pain associated with: HIV infection, shingles, diabetes, immune disorders and toxic neuropathies (for example following treatment with chemotherapeutics). These include the development of antidepressants (Cymbalta), anti-epileptic agents (Lyrica and Prialt) glutamate antagonists (Namenda, Lamictal and CNS 5161) and the cannabinoid agonist (Sativex).
View Cart
