The HIV market continues to grow slowly but steadily in the US and EU, and now includes approximately 900K patients in these geographies. Growth has been spurred by increasing use of HIV diagnostics, which is encouraged by recent legislation (#msg-31419107), and by new guidelines that recommend starting anti-retroviral therapy with a higher CD4 count than in prior guidelines (#msg-33124429).
GILD’s Atripla/Truvada franchise continues to take market share from GSK’s Epzicom/Kivexa, which is a very distant second among nucleoside backbones. Moreover, the newest drugs to gain significant traction in the first-line setting—MRK’s Isentress and JNJ’s Prezista—are used with Truvada 77% and 84% of the time, respectively in the US market.
The counterpoint to GILD’s impressive conquest of the HIV market is that there are relatively few remaining people to be switched to a GILD regimen. Thus, continued growth of GILD’s HIV franchise will have to come from growth of the overall HIV market rather than gains in market share.
Here are the data† on penetration and market share from GILD’s 1Q10 CC:
US patients: All lines 191K on Atripla (33% share) 222K on Truvada (38% share) 29K on standalone Viread (5% share) ==== 442K on GILD regimens (76% share) 139K on non-GILD regimens (24% share) ==== 581K total patients, +4% year-over-year, +1% quarter-over-quarter
US patients: First-line only Atripla/Truvada: 86% share
EU* patients: All lines 203K on GILD regimens (69% share) 91K on non-GILD regimens (31% share) ==== 294K total patients, +7% year-over-year, +2% quarter-over-quarter
EU* patients: First-line only Atripla/Truvada: 79% share in 1Q10 (up from 73% in 1Q09) Kivexa: 7% share in 1Q10 (down from 13% in 1Q09)
*Top-5 EU countries: Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain. †As of the end of 4Q09 unless otherwise specified.
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