While prices for new drugs continue to increase overall, a new study has revealed significant disparities between therapeutic areas.
The cross-sectional study used data on new drugs launched in the UK between 1981 and 2015 for hypertension, asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, schizophrenia and colorectal cancer.
Newly launched medicines and their launch prices were identified by hand-searching all editions of the British National Formulary in addition to searching the websites of the European Medicines Agency and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. The launch price for a 28-day supply of each medicine at a typical or usual maintenance dose was adjusted for the effects of general inflation using the gross domestic product deflator series.
A total of 104 drugs were included, with a mean inflation-adjusted 28-day launch price of £288 (SD, £678).
The launch price of new drugs varied significantly across the five conditions, with drugs for hypertension having the lowest mean price (£27) and drugs for colorectal cancer having the highest mean price (£1590; P<.0001).
Biological drugs represented 13.5 per cent of all included drugs and had a significantly higher launch price than non-biological drugs (£1233 vs £141; P<.001).
Over 22 per cent of included drugs were first-of-kind and had a significantly higher launch price than follow-on drugs (£768 vs £151; P<.0001).
The authors said: “It is unclear to what extent these patterns represent developers passing on real differences in development and manufacturing costs or different pricing strategies based on an assessment of the current market and payers' willingness to pay more for some conditions.”
“Publicly funded healthcare systems demand value for money, but existing pricing systems lack the transparency to ensure access to drugs at reasonable and justified prices,” they said.
