Switches, strong season fuel allergy remedy sales

Drug Store News,  March 1, 2004  by Michael Johnsen

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A strong spring allergy season this year will continue to drive sales of allergy remedies up, even as lower cold and flu rates begin to ease demand for cough-cold remedies.

"The kind of [cold and wet] winter we're having this year bodes very well for a very strong spring [allergy season]," remarked Gerald Kress, chief executive officer of Surveillance Data. "We're forecasting that the spring [allergy] season is going to be ,up by 3 percent to 5 percent in the number of people experiencing allergy attacks beginning in late February, he said.

Growth in sales of allergy remedies has continued to climb through this past cough-cold season, which is surprising, Kress said. According to one of SDI's consumer panel surveys, Kress noted, 10 percent of households in which a person had a cold treated that cold with an allergy product in place of a cold/flu product.

The switch of Claritin to over-the-counter status surely has been a shot in the arm for allergy marketers in the past year--a large portion of the 43 percent lift in sales of cold/allergy/sinus tablets this year can be attributed to sales of loratadine, according to Information Resources Inc. data.

And the allergy set may get another shot in the arm as soon as next year: Aventis is facing as many as six generic challenges to its Allegra (fexofenadine) patent this September.

"Consensus is expecting generics to win this litigation and launch competing products in early to mid2005," stated Catherine Arnold, a Bernstein analyst, in a Jan. 26 research report. Should Aventis win, Allegra will be patent-protected through 2013.

Of course, if a generically equivalent fexofenadine is granted access to the market, it is quite likely it will be in the OTC market. Two Food and Drug Administration advisory committees already have recommended fexofenadine, as well as Pfizer's Zyrtec, be sold over the counter.

Aventis is preparing to defend its patent vigorously, of course--the company stands to lose as much as $1.5 billion in prescription sales. However, Patrick Langlois, Aventis chief financial officer, last month acknowledged that several companies have expressed interest in purchasing the rights to Allegra, and that option would serve as a contingency plan in the event Aventis loses patent protection. Currently, Aventis has no consumer health care division to execute an OTC introduction.

If fexofenadine switches, the remaining prescription-only antihistamines may fall into the OTC marketplace like dominoes. Patents protecting Zyrtec expire in 2007. And ,though Clarinex patents aren't set to expire until at least 2009, continuing as the sole prescription antihistamine when the rest of the market has switched may not be such an attractive position for Schering-Plough.

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