Russian sales of middle and high-priced original drugs steadily growing

Although drug sales in Russia fell 13% in the first four months of the current year in volume terms to 1.7 billion packages, they grew by 4.8% to 390 billion roubles ($5.4 billion) in terms of value, reports The Pharma Letter’s local correspondent.

This was mainly due to the growth of sales of drugs in the middle and high-priced segments of the market, according to a recent study, conducted by the Russian pharmaceutical publication Pharmaceutical Bulletin and a local analytics agency AlphaRM.

The growth of sales of high-priced drugs was observed both in the case of domestic and global drugmakers, such as Pfizer’s (NYSE: PFE) Eliquis (apixaban) antithrombotic agent, as well as venous drug Detralex of French Servier. In the meantime, Xarelto (rivaroxaban) from Germany’s Bayer (BAYN: DE) for the prevention of thrombosis has remained the leader in sales for two years now. This was despite a relatively high average cost of the drug of 3,286 roubles ($45).