Lilly - Effient: sluggish launch?

Sales of Eli Lilly & Co.'s new anti- clotting drug Effient appear sluggish, a Wall Street analyst said Monday, but Lilly's finance chief said the drug maker is making progress convincing health plans to pay for it.

The latest data for U.S. prescription volumes "reinforce our view that Effient's U.S. launch will be muted," Leerink Swann analyst Seamus Fernandez wrote in a research note Monday.

Fernandez, citing data from health-information provider IMS Health, said there have been 1,823 new prescriptions written for Effient since shortly after its August launch, which puts it significantly behind the most successful new drug launches of the past seven years.

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