Health Concerns Partially Cause Byetta to Lose Ground in Diabetes Market

Princeton, NJA new diabetes drug introduced earlier this year will likely challenge Eli Lilly's Byetta for control of the diabetes medication market.

span itemprop="image" itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/ImageObject" style="display:block">Novo Nordisk's Victoza was introduced in America this past February and has quickly gained ground on rival diabetes drugs, according to CBS's bnet. Both Victoza and Byetta are GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide) agonist medications, which attempt to induce insulin secretion from the body.

When Byetta was launched in 2005 it was thought that its sales would total $1 billion by 2010, but a number of instances of acute pancreatitis hurt the medication's reputation. Between mid-2005 and October 2007, the US Food and Drug Administration received 30 reports of acute pancreatitis. By late 2008 that number had doubled, reports the news source.

This led to a decline in the number of patients taking Byetta. According to data obtained by Wolters Kluwer, only 440,000 were on the drug in 2009, compared to 470,000 in 2007.

Victoza has been able to capitalize on these issues, in part because it only needs to be injected once a day rather than twice daily like Byetta.