Unipolar depression drug market set to decrease by nearly 10% in 2019 due to generic erosion

As a result of generic erosion for key agents such as Pfizer's Effexor XR (venlafaxine), Eli Lilly/Boehringer Ingelheim's Cymbalta/Xeristar (duloxetine) and Forest Laboratories/Lundbeck's Lexapro/Cipralex/Seroplex (escitalopram), the unipolar depression drug market will decrease in size by nearly 10% over the next decade in the USA, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK and Japan, according to a new report from Decision Resources.

DR's Pharmacor 2010 findings reveal that sales of therapies in the unipolar depression market - which includes those attributed to major depressive disorder, dysthymia and minor depression - will decline to just over $9 billion in 2019 in the countries under study. Although generic erosion will constrain overall growth, sales of atypical antipsychotics such as Bristol-Myers Squibb/Otsuka's Abilify (aripiprazole) and AstraZeneca's Seroquel (quetiapine) will help to partially offset the market's decline.

"Atypical antipsychotics, most notably Abilify and Seroquel, will continue to have an increasing therapeutic role as adjunctive treatments to antidepressants in patients with treatment-resistant depression," said Decision Resources analyst Natalie Taylor, adding that, "as a result, sales of atypical antipsychotics for unipolar depression will peak at just over $2 billion in 2011