Wyeth, the US drugs group that employs about 2,000 people in the Republic, yesterday defended its women's hormone replacement franchise, stressing it continued to be a broad, strong firm not reliant on one drug.
Earlier this month, a Women's Health Initiative study showed an increased risk of breast cancer, stroke and heart attacks from taking Wyeth's Prempro combination hormone therapy over five years. Prempro has almost $1 billion (€1.01 billion) in annual sales and Premarin, Wyeth's other oestrogen product, has about another $1 billion in sales.
Wyeth said it was too early to gauge the damage and that it was cooperating on labelling changes with regulatory officials worldwide. Early estimates show prescriptions for Prempro were down 35 per cent.
Company executives said further studies were likely to be presented on hormone replacement therapy and that the treatment still benefited patients. Moreover, it said it would still have seen sales growth in the first half without Prempro due to its other products.
It made no comment about the controversy over hazardous waste from its Newbridge, Co Kildare, plant that has resulted in the closure of farms on the Continent. Wyeth was expected to be one of the few stars in the quarter for the industry. It has few drugs in jeopardy of losing patent protection and several growing products.
The industry has seen intense scrutiny and falling share prices in a sector once seen as safe and defensive. Some issues looming over the industry include grassroots and political pressure for lower drug prices, a wave of key-drug patent expiries, few new drug discoveries and probes into manufacturing quality issues.
In the second quarter, Wyeth profits rose 26 per cent to $600 million, or 45 US cents per share, compared with $477 million, or 36 cents, last time. Sales increased 10 per cent to $3.5 billion.
