Inside Abbott's Tactics to Protect AIDS Drug

Inside Abbott's Tactics to Protect AIDS Drug

Abbott Laboratories introduced the protease inhibitor (PI) Norvir in 1996, but its strength was its weakness: It had serious side effects as a stand-alone PI. But taken in smaller doses, Norvir boosted the efficacy of PIs, including competitors' PIs.

When Abbott developed Kaletra in 2000, a PI containing Norvir, its convenience made it attractive. But in June 2003, Bristol-Myers Squibb introduced Reyataz, a Norvir-boosted PI that was even more convenient, requiring fewer pills a day.

Internal documents show Abbott executives saw that as a problem, the Wall Street Journal reported. Abbott reportedly used its monopoly on Norvir, making it more expensive, to protect sales of Kaletra. Abbott executives conferred with public relations consultants on strategy.

Pulling Norvir from the global market was internally described as a way to moot price discussions. Another option, pulling Norvir pills from the US market under the guise of shipping Norvir to "the developing world (i.e., Africa)," would leave US patients with the liquid form, which an Abbott executive admitted had been "characterized as tasting like someone else's vomit."

Ultimately, Abbott chose to quintuple Norvir's wholesale price, from $51.30 to $257.10 per month for 100-mg pills, saying that better reflected its value. Kaletra cost about $7,000 per year. But boosted-Reyataz increased by $2,504, to $11,187 a year. Regimens needing more than once-daily boosting rose by $5,000 or more a year.

Patients and doctors protested the price increase. Abbott exempted Medicaid, Medicare, and state

AIDS

Drug Assistance Programs (ADAPs) from it, leaving private insurers and other institutions such as jails to pay. In North Carolina, prisons had to cut back on resistance testing as a result. Those with proportional co-payments had their incomes hit. Abbott assured patients who might fall through the cracks it would expand charitable patient-assistance.

In early 2008, the US district court in Oakland, Calif., is expected to take up a case, filed by two AIDS patients and the Service Employees International Union Health and Welfare Fund, alleging antitrust law violations by Abbott. Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has been investigating for three years whether the price hike violates the state's consumer fraud law.

Most people infected with HIV carry the virus for years before manifesting AIDS. During that period, infected people will have few, if any, symptoms yet they can transmit the virus.
The percentage of women with AIDS has increased steadily, and the percentage of people infected heterosexually has also increased, surpassing the percentage infected through injecting drug use.
During 2001, there were 35575 newly diagnosed cases of HIV infection. The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates now that 40,000 new cases of HIV transmission occur every year.
Of the people infected with the virus of AIDS in the USA in the year 2001, 42% were whites, 37% blacks, 20% Hispanics and <1% Asians and Pacific Islanders and <1% American Indians and Alaska Natives.
During the 1990s, the HIV epidemic shifted steadily toward a growing proportion of AIDS cases in blacks and Hispanics and in women.

Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is the cause of AIDS (Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome). The presence of HIV in the body can be detected in several ways. The most common is the HIV-ELISA Antibodies test.

The HIV-ELISA looks for the body response to the virus manifested by the presence in your blood of Antibodies to HIV proteins. Antibodies are special proteins that our Immune System produce in response to the presence of HIV.

The test performed on your sample actually consists of two tests: a Screening test and a Confirmatory test. The screening test procedure is called an ELISA—Enzyme Linked Immuno-Sorbent Assay or an EIA (Enzyme Immunosorbent Assay). The confirmatory test is used in the event your HIV-ELISA is positive and/or equivocal and is the procedure used is the Western Blot Assay (WB)

The screening and confirmatory tests are usually done using small samples of blood. If a sample of blood tests positive repeatedly in the screening test, it will be confirmed through the Western Blot test. People will be informed that they are infected with HIV only after both the screening and confirmatory tests have shown a positive (reactive) result.

Positive HIV antibody tests results are over 99% accurate when confirmed. Negative HIV antibody tests are over 99% accurate if it has been at least six months after a contact with a potentially HIV-infected partner. False negatives or false positives occur rarely.

Antibodies to HIV can be detected in the blood, in the urine or in the saliva. People produce antibodies with different speeds and therefore the time interval between infection and the development of antibodies to HIV can go from four weeks to six months from the exposure date or SDC ( Suspected Date of Contact). The appearance of antibodies in a blood or urine sample of a person which was known to be negative to HIV is called Seroconversion.

The HIV Elisa results are usually available in one or two business days.

STDWeB provides only health screening services. Tests are provided only for personal information and/or risk identification purposes. STDWeB does not diagnose or treat medical conditions. STDWeB screenings do not take the place of a physician care. Transactions with STDWeB are confidential and will not be shared with third parties. Tests with "positive" or "indeterminate" result may require confirmatory testing and may involve additional charges.