Sales of asthma therapies will jump from $8.4 billion in 2003 to $13.1 billion in 2013

Decision Resources, a research and advisory firms focusing on pharmaceutical and health care issues, forecasts that sales of asthma therapies in the United States, Japan, and Western Europe will jump from $8.4 billion in 2003 to $13.1 billion in 2013.

According to the new Pharmacor study entitled Asthma, recognition of the disease as a chronic inflammatory disorder provoked a profound change in the asthma marketplace as treatment shifted from rescue bronchodilation to ongoing, anti-inflammatory maintenance therapy. The perception of asthma as a chronic inflammatory disorder continues to take hold throughout the major pharmaceutical markets.

"Current treatment paradigms emphasize the importance of ongoing prophylactic therapy over older approaches based on rescue bronchodilators," said Cynthia Mundy, Ph.D., analyst at Decision Resources. "Our research reveals that physicians throughout the major markets are accepting the recommendations of evidence-based treatment guidelines that encourage the use of inhaled corticosteroids, corticosteroid/beta2 agonists, and leukotriene antagonists as daily prophylactic therapy for asthma. As a result, sales of these drug classes have increased dramatically, and this growth is expected to continue throughout our study's ten-year forecast period."

The study finds that long-acting beta2 agonists, corticosteroid/beta2 agonist combination products, and leukotriene antagonists have emerged as the dominant drug classes in the clinic and in the marketplace.