Female libido-boosting pill flops on the market

MORE than half a million men got prescriptions for Viagra in its first month on the market in 1998. The number of prescriptions for Addyi, the women’s libidoboosting pill, in its first few weeks? 227.

“I thought there was going to be this huge onslaught,” said Stephanie Faubion, a director of the Women’s Health Clinic at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. “There have been a few casual inquiries, but no prescriptions yet.”

Addyi, made by

Valeant Pharmaceuticals International’s Sprout unit, was controversial even before it hit the US market on October 17.

The pill offers meaningful help for only about 10 percent more patients than a placebo, and it comes with a risk of serious side effects, including severely low blood pressure and fainting.

Problems

To minimise these potential problems, women are supposed to refrain from alcohol while taking the daily pill.

“There’s been a lot of scepticism about this particular drug, from both women and their clinicians,” said Alina Salganicoff, the vice-president and director of women’s health programmes at the Kaiser Family Foundation in California.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had twice rejected Addyi, approving it on August 18 on the condition that doctors get certified to prescribe it, to ensure they understood the risks and could counsel patients about them. This requires online training that takes about 10 minutes to complete.

The certification is an additional FDA safeguard to ensure proper use of particularly risky medications.

Roughly 5 600 doctors had been cleared so far, said Michael Pearson, Valeant’s chief executive, on a November 10 earnings call.

That is about 1 percent of the more than 35 000 practicing obstetricians, gynaecologists and 435 084 primary-care physicians in the US, based on data from the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the Kaiser foundation.

Drugs like Pfizer’s Viagra and Eli Lilly’s Cialis, which had combined sales of $3.98bn (R57.2bn) last year, help men who cannot get an erection by increasing blood flow to the penis.

Addyi is similar to an antidepressant, targeting neurotransmitters such as dopamine and norepinephrine that communicate information throughout the mind and body and can affect mood.

Cost may be an issue with Addyi. Sprout would not provide a price, but the pharmacy at the Rochester Women’s Health Clinic sold it for $26 a pill, Faubion said.

That is about the cost of Viagra, yet Addyi must be taken every day, so the monthly tally is about $780. -– Bloomberg