Atorvastatin (Lipitor)

Lipitor is the brand name for atorvastatin calcium. (The calcium is the anion part of the salt. Prescription drugs are frequently sold as salts. This drug is not a major source of dietary calcium.)

Lipitor is the single biggest selling (in terms of total dollars) prescription drug in the world today. Global sales were $12.7 billion in 2007. It is the single biggest moneymaker for the biggest pharmaceutical company (Pfizer), making up over a quarter of that company’s sales. Right now lipitor is under patent in the major countries. The patent in the US will expire in November 2011; until then only Pfizer can legally sell atorvastatin in the United States. Pfizer has told its investors it is already planning to cut costs in anticipation of a decline in revenue when the patent expires.

Earlier there were hopes that generic atorvastatin could be available in the US by March 2010, sold by Ranbaxy Laboratories. Pfizer settled disputes with Ranbaxy and there won’t be generic atorvastatin in the drugstores until late 2011. Under the agreement between the two companies, Ranbaxy will be able to sell the generic product in Canada and some European countries before the patent expires in the United States. So Canadians will get the generic drug earlier than Americans. The Federal Trade Commission disapproves of deals in which pharmaceutical companies pay each other off to keep generic drugs off the market, but Pfizer says this agreement will pass FTC scrutiny.

After patent expiration, will the price decline? Maybe. History shows that the price of Zocor (simvastatin) declined once a generic product hit the market, but not as much as observers had predicted. The brand name seems to command some premium, as Zocor costs most than the generic equivalent.

Like all statins, atorvastatin works in the liver, by inhibiting enzymes that make cholesterol.. It is taken as a pill, and the concentration of the drug in the bloodstream peaks an hour or two after the pill is ingested. Guidelines suggest you eat a little food with the pill as this tends to slow the absorption from the digestive system. Almost all the atovastatin in the blood is bound to plasma proteins. In this way, the medicine and cholesterol are similar in the way they travel in the bloodstream.