Despite High Satisfaction Among Surveyed Physicians at 12 Months Post Launch, Physicians Continue to Place Dificid as a Second or Third Line Therapy in the Treatment Algorithm for CDAD
BioTrends Research Group and Arlington Medical Resources (AMR) in their report finds that physician familiarity with Optimer/Cubist/Astellas’ Dificid continues to improve among surveyed infectious disease (ID) specialists and internists, and current Dificid users have a high level of satisfaction with the drug. However, the majority of Dificid users indicated that the drug is most often reserved for later-line treatment of -associated diarrhea (CDAD).
Surveyed physicians link Dificid to attributes that are most important when selecting a therapy for CDAD, primarily efficacy in recurrent infections and prevention of recurrent infections. However, surveyed physicians continue to focus on Dificid’s price as its main disadvantage versus the competition, yet only 18 percent of physicians are aware of Optimer’s patient assistance program. Interestingly, over 80 percent of surveyed internists and ID specialists view Dificid’s benefits as either offsetting or outweighing its cost.
“Although Dificid has advantages over oral vancomycin, including dosing frequency and superiority on the endpoint of sustained clinical response and efficacy after the completion of treatment, the cost of the drug and perceived current reimbursement challenges in the outpatient setting are likely to constrain the uptake of Dificid,” said Associate Therapeutic Class Director of Infectious Diseases Brenda Perez-Cheeks, Ph.D. “The recent entry of generic oral vancomycin also poses new challenges for Dificid and other emerging therapies to compete in the CDAD market.”
Regarding Dificid usage, ID specialists continue to outpace surveyed internists, likely owing to factors, such as formulary restrictions on Dificid use and recent contact with Dificid representatives for the prescribing gap. Nearly two-thirds of ID specialists have prescribed Dificid to CDAD patients, which is an improvement from the previous sampling time periods of three months and six months post-launch of Dificid. Among surveyed internists, however, Dificid usage has declined in comparison to previous research waves.
Regarding awareness of developing products for the treatment of CDAD, overall surveyed physicians have moderate awareness of Cubist’s CB-315, Merck’s MK-3415A, and ViroPharma’s VP20621.
LaunchTrends®: Dificid is a four-wave syndicated report series designed to track perceptions and anticipated use of Dificid at pre-launch and three months, six months, and twelve months following launch. LaunchTrends® assesses trial and use of new products, barriers to use, reasons to use, typical patient types, line of therapy, product perceptions, promotional efforts/messages, and product satisfaction. In the current wave of research, BioTrends and AMR surveyed 52 ID specialists and 53 internists and conducted qualitative interviews with a subset of 15 of the survey responders. BioTrends will continue to track the uptake of Dificid in addition to other key CDAD therapies in TreatmentTrends: Infections (US) report publishing in November 2012.
BioTrends Research Group provides syndicated primary and custom market research to pharmaceutical manufacturers competing in clinically evolving, specialty pharmaceutical markets. For information on BioTrends publications and research capabilities, please contact us at (610) 321-9400 or BioTrends is a Decision Resources Group company.
AMR () serves the market intelligence needs of the pharmaceutical and diagnostic imaging industries. Research includes clinical inpatient and hospital databases that directly link anti-infective drugs with indication/procedure, formulary and stocking status tracking studies, drug purchasing audits and diagnostic imaging procedure volume/contrast media usage audits. AMR is a Decision Resources Group company.
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