Friday, May 06, 2011

NICE rejects pricey leukaemia drugs | Reuters

(Reuters) - Bristol-Myers Squibb's leukaemia drug Sprycel and rival Novartis product Tasigna are not worth using on the state health service, the country's healthcare cost watchdog said.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) also said in draft guidance on Friday it was not able to recommend high-dose Glivec -- another drug for chronic myeloid leukaemia -- following a recent price increase.

"The evidence for the effectiveness of dasatinib (Sprycel), high-dose imatinib (Glivec) and nilotinib (Tasigna) is very weak," NICE chief executive Andrew Dillon said.

"When we recommend the use of very expensive treatments, we need to be confident that they bring sufficient additional benefit to justify their cost."

Both Sprycel and Tasigna cost more than 30,000 pounds ($50,000) per patient per year, while high-dose 800 milligrams Glivec now costs 40,000 pounds.

Posted via email from Jack's posterous

1 comment:

Sumdili said...

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