Physicians have virtually stopped writing new prescriptions (NWRx’s) for Vytorin and Zetia since the bad news about the ENHANCE trial became public. This is evident in the chart below compiled by ImpactRx.
Click to Enlarge.I first saw this chart over at the WSJ Health Blog, but they forgot to include the key that would allow you to identify the drugs. Seems I was the only person who caught this and cared enough to contact the people at ImpactRX, who kindly supplied me with my own version of the chart, key and all.
If physicians continue to NOT write NRx’s for these drugs — they have increased NRx’s for simvastatin, the cheap, generic version of Merck’s Zocor — then that would mean trouble for Merck and Schering in the Lipid drug market.
It seems that Lipitor may also be in trouble, according to the WSJ Blog. U.S. sales of Lipitor were down 8% from 2006, and world-wide sales were off 2% (“The End of the Lipitor Era“).
