Word: heartburns
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Relief from heartburn has been provided for more than a century by antacids that include such familiar brands as Tums, Rolaids, Maalox and Mylanta, products that annually rack up sales approaching $1 billion in the U.S. alone. These antacids, which bring relief within minutes, work by neutralizing the stomach acid that causes heartburn. But because the stomach continues to produce acid, they remain effective for only a few hours...
That is why, beginning in the late 1970s, pharmaceutical companies started offering such new drugs as Zantac, Tagamet, Pepcid and Axid, available only by prescription for those with serious heartburn or ulcers. While these brands took as long as an hour to kick in, they actually blocked the production of stomach acids and could protect against heartburn for as long as 12 hours. Despite their prescription-only status, these drugs quickly won favor, and today account for $3.7 billion annually in U.S. sales...
...lower-priced generic drugs, the pharmaceutical firms are seeking and winning approval from the Food and Drug Administration for over-the-counter sales of somewhat milder versions of the blockers. At stake as the companies tout these products, say industry analysts, is an additional $1 billion in sales for heartburn medications. "This is a blockbuster," says Paul Kelly, president of Silvermine Consulting Group, in Westport, Connecticut. "It's the most dramatic medical launch since Advil." Two acid blockers, Tagamet HB and Pepcid AC, have begun battling it out for market share, and two more--including the British colossus Zantac...
...October Federal Judge Harold Baer Jr. decided that the first casualties of the heartburn wars would be the overblown claims, ordering both sides to withdraw or modify those that could not be proved. He later ordered SmithKline to correct a letter it had sent to doctors and pharmacists to "ensure that [they] had not been misled" about the lawsuits between SmithKline and J&J/Merck...
...firms in the fray or about to enter it are only too aware that their new heartburn drugs are bound to cannibalize their traditional antacid products. In touting Tagamet HB, for example, SmithKline has to avoid invidious comparisons with Tums, its antacid moneymaker, while J&J/Merck must tiptoe around any comparisons between Pepcid AC and its antacid, the much advertised Mylanta. Meanwhile, Switzerland's Ciba-Geigy has other worries. Though it has no acid blocker available that could bite into sales of Maalox, its bread-and-butter antacid, its competitors' new drugs almost certainly will...