![]() Total sales of Nuedexta reached almost $300 million that year. The number of pills rose to roughly 14 million in 2016, a jump of nearly 400% in just four years, according to data obtained from QuintilesIMS, which tracks pharmaceutical sales. Since 2012, more than half of all Nuedexta pills have gone to long-term care facilities. In her former nursing home, Lenore Greenfield was diagnosed with PBA and prescribed Nuedexta by California psychiatrist Romeo Isidro, a physician who has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in promotional payments from Avanir. Nuedexta’s financial success, however, is being propelled by a sales force focused on expanding the drug’s use among elderly patients suffering from dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, and high-volume prescribing and advocacy efforts by doctors receiving payments from the company, CNN found. This condition afflicts less than 1% of all Americans, based on a calculation using the drugmaker’s own figures, and it is most commonly associated with people who have multiple sclerosis (MS) or ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. ![]() The pill, called Nuedexta, is approved to treat a disorder marked by sudden and uncontrollable laughing or crying – known as pseudobulbar affect, or PBA. The maker of a little red pill intended to treat a rare condition is raking in hundreds of millions of dollars a year as it aggressively targets frail and elderly nursing home residents for whom the drug may be unnecessary or even unsafe, a CNN investigation has found.Īnd much of the money is coming straight from the federal government.
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