Multiple Sclerosis Treatment - Gilenya Usage Increasing At The Expense Of Extavia

BioTrends Research Group, Inc. concludes that Extavia, a treatment for Multiple Sclerosis, has been pushed to the back burner on the heels of a new product launch by Novartis called Gilenya. Gilenya is the first of its kind oral disease modifying agent used to combat MS. Since Gilenya hit the market, there has been a significant drop in patient prescriptions of Extavia.

However, it seems that polled neurologists do not think the frequency of their Extavia prescriptions will decrease over the next 6 months despite Novartis’ marketing of the new Gilenya alternative is expected to increase considerably.

According to LaunchTrends, a service used to evaluate new trials and product launches, Extavia has been tracked at four different intervals since its market launch - at 1 month, 6 months, 9 months, and 1 year. The research done presently has resulted in 76 neurologists questioned about prescription rates and a further set of questions to a subset of 20 neurologists in November 2010. The same tracking will be done on Gilenya over the next year with the first review to be publicly available in February 2011.