J&J’s Risperdal Consta No Better Than Cheaper Drugs in Study - Bloomberg

Johnson & Johnson (JNJ)’s antipsychotic medicine Risperdal Consta, its third-best-selling drug, fared no better than less expensive treatments at keeping schizophrenia patients out of the hospital, U.S. researchers said.

Patients on Risperdal Consta, a twice-monthly injection, ended up in the hospital 39 percent of the time during the three-year analysis, about the same as those who took other drugs as a daily pill, a study released yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine said. People on the J&J treatment also reported more headaches and muscle tremors among their side effects, scientists found.

Risperdal Consta generated $1.5 billion in sales last year for New Brunswick, New Jersey-based J&J. Today’s findings undercut what has been the injection’s main selling point: that patients are more likely to stay on the medicine because it’s taken less often, said Robert Rosenheck, the study’s lead author. Researchers saw no better adherence after the initial two-week dose, he said.

“This study gives no reason why the use of this treatment should be increased” over other drugs, said Rosenheck, a researcher with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which funded the study. “It may be effective for individual patients, but as a matter of policy, this is an expensive treatment and there’s no reason to aggressively promote it.”

$7,000 Price

A year of Risperdal Consta costs about $7,000 a patient, making it the most expensive of all antipsychotic drugs, said Rosenheck, lead investigator at the VA’s New England Mental Illness, Research Education and Clinical Center.

J&J is contending with product recalls and manufacturing shutdowns that cut sales by $900 million in 2010. The company retracted 40 consumer products last year, led by over-the- counter children’s medicines and Tylenol pain pills, along with artificial hips and contact lenses. U.K. regulators yesterday said the company had also pulled batches of four brands of sutures after faulty packaging threatened their sterile seals.

The journal study is unlikely to hurt J&J sales, said Glenn Novarro, a New York-based analyst at RBC Capital Markets, in an interview. The company has already shifting sales to a newer antipsychotic injection, the once-a-month Invega Sustenna, he said.

Risperdal Consta “is yesterday’s drug,” Novarro said. “It’ll have zero impact on the stock,” he said of the study.

via bloomberg.com

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