Generic are kings.

This is the message since the last report on the consumption of drugs by the IMS Institute U.S. for Healthcare Informatics, who concluded that unbranded drugs now represent 78% of all the executed orders.

There are only three drugs brand on the list of commonly prescribed drugs: Lipitor from Pfizer, # 12; Sanofi-Aventis and Bristol-Myers Squibb Plavix, # 23 and Merck Singulair, # 25. And all three are due to lose the protection by patent this year or next year. (The report also said that within 6 months of loss of patent, generic take 80% of the share of the prescription.)

Runaway favourite drug of the year was, once more, hydrocodone/acetaminophen, the generic form of the Painkiller Vicodin. More than 131 million prescriptions were issued last year, approximately 37 million more than the second most popular drug, generic simvastatin anti-cholesterol.

Course, the list of drugs more sold by $, is composed entirely of drugs of mark, with Lipitor, AstraZeneca Nexium, Plavix, Advair Diskus GlaxoSmithKline and Bristol-Myers and Otsuka America Abilify as our 1-5. (Matthew Herper of Forbes wondered how Nexium, “the child displays me-too drugs,” managed to generate $ 6.3 billion in sales).

Overall, expenditure on medicines have increased more than 307 billion from $, just 2.3%. Here is the history of Dow Jones Newswires on the report.

Image: iStockphoto

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