
Clinician impact and financial cost to NHS of litigation over pregabalin - DanBC
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/02/17/266403
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DanBC
One of the authors of this piece has some involvement with OpenPrescribing.

In England all prescription info is open. We can use that to try to reduce
prescribing of meds that have more effective alternatives, or that have
cheaper as effective alternatives, or that are dangerous.

[https://openprescribing.net/](https://openprescribing.net/)

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cirrus-clouds
Another example: anti-cancer drug Avastis has been found to be effective
against blindness in old age (wet macular degeneration). The current drug for
preventing wet macular degeneration is Lucentis, which costs 10 times more
than Avastis.

Twelve NHS clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) have recommended switching to
the cheaper (and just as effective) Avastis drug. But Novartis and Bayer, who
market the more expensive Lucentis, have threaten legal action over the use of
the cheaper drug.

[https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/nov/01/drug-
giants-...](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/nov/01/drug-giants-
threaten-nhs-with-legal-action-over-cheaper-drug-that-could-save-84m-a-year)

~~~
dm319
And this is the concern of agreements like TTIP, where companies can sue
government policies that result in lost revenue.

Obviously there are some benefits - i.e. governments deliberately creating
regulations that make competition difficult and essentially recreating
protectionism while reaping the rewards of a free market, so I can see why it
is a good thing, but it could easily be abused.

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DanBC
The full title is "The clinician impact & financial cost to the NHS of
litigation over pregabalin: a cohort study in English primary care | bioRxiv"
\- too long for the 80 char limit.

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romdev
A family member spends $450 US per month on Lyrica/pregabalin. I wonder if
this patent decision could result in a rebate for individual patients.

