According to Bloomberg, “Eli Lilly & Co.'s third-quarter profit rose 10 percent as sales of its Cymbalta antidepressant almost doubled.
Net income rose to $873.6 million, or 80 cents a share, from $794.4 million, or 73 cents, a year earlier, the company said in a statement on PR Newswire… The result beat analyst estimates.”
Revenue from Cymbalta, up 91 percent to $348.6 million, benefited after Lilly reorganized its sales force to focus on the market for depression drugs. Cymbalta ``continues to show exceptionally strong growth in 2006, and new prescription levels are currently more than 40 percent above late 2005 levels,'' Ryan wrote in an Oct. 4 report to investors.
Lilly also said that sales of the Zyprexa schizophrenia drug, which declined 5 percent in 2005, had stabilized. Sales of Zyprexa rose 4.8 percent to $1.08 billion, the first increase recorded for the drug in at least six quarters. In 2005, the drug provided about 29 percent of the company's total sales.
Zyprexa benefited from ``pricing increases that are offsetting double-digit prescription declines,'' said Chris Shibutani, a JP Morgan Securities analyst in New York, in an Oct. 11 report to investors.
In July, the state of Mississippi joined three other states suing Lilly over Zyprexa, saying the drugmaker fraudulently touted Zyprexa for unapproved uses, including for children, and hid the drug's potential hazards, including excessive weight gain and an increased risk of diabetes.
Lilly has agreed to settle about 8,000 personal injury complaints related to the drug for $700 million in 2005 and faces more than 4,000 additional claims.”
Must be all that evidence piling up indicating that Cymbalta is much more safe and effective than other antidepressants? Perhaps I should post on the evidence regarding this hot-selling medication. I can see why Lilly keeps jacking up the price of Zyprexa. With all of the lawsuits, it has to be pretty pricey to justify its existence!
Link to Bloomberg article here.
Rather than delete the above comment, I'll leave it, and add that I've noticed that Mr. Haszard has gone to several blogs and made the exact same post. While I am sympathetic to persons who have suffered adverse events from taking psych meds, I think blanketing blogs with identical comments is a little tacky.
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