Pain Therapy Drugs Market :
As the market evolves over the next decade current market leaders will lose patent expiry and become subject to generic competition. What’s in the pipeline and which companies and products will prosper?
Pain affects around 1.5 billion people worldwide. In most cases, pain is temporary and easily treated with commonly available analgesics. For some people, however, pain is a debilitating, chronic condition. In Europe, an estimated 20% of the population suffers from chronic pain. As the population ages, the number of people with chronic pain is increasing, particularly from conditions such as osteoarthritis. Chronic pain is also associated with cancer. An estimated 30% of all cancer patients are in pain with the proportion more than doubling among people with late-stage cancer. In recent years, drug development in pain therapy has been focused mainly on reformulations of existing therapies and alternative modes of drug delivery in order to improve the safety and efficacy of existing drug groups.
Drugs of the future
This report identifies 75 agents in clinical development for pain indications, of which 26 are in development for neuropathic pain. Among these, six are specifically targeting postherpetic neuralgia. Other indications specified, include: diabetic peripheral neuropathy, central neuropathic pain due to spinal cord injury or multiple sclerosis (MS), neuropathic pain in cancer, lumbosacral radiculopathy, and painful neuropathies affecting AIDS patients. Nociceptive pain indications being targeted by developers,
include: osteoarthritis pain and chronic low back pain.
This report answers key questions on:
- What is the current clinical understanding of pain?
- What is the status of, and commercial prospects for, currently available pain therapies?
- What drugs are in the pipeline and what is their status?
- Which companies are set to win, and which to lose, as the pain sector develops over the next 5 years?
Tackling Opioid Abuse
Opioid abuse is a widely known problem, particularly in the US. Prescription drug abuse in the US is the country’s fastest growing drug abuse problem and has been directly correlated to a dramatic increase in the number of prescriptions filled for opioids. According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, between 1997 and 2007, the milligram-per-person use of prescription opioids in the US increased from 74mg to 369mg while the number of prescriptions for opioids dispensed by retail pharmacies rose from 174 million in 2000 to 257 million in 2009. In 2007, the number of deaths from unintentional overdose of opioids in the US was 11,499, compared with just 2,901 in 1999. Despite the potential for abuse, however, opioids remain important in the treatment of moderate to severe chronic pain and several companies such as Acura and Collegium are developing formulations aimed at deterring abuse.
