Characteristics of purchases of hypoglycemic agents in pharmacy retail sector in 2016–2020 years dynamics

BACKGROUND: Procurement of medicines reflects the demand and frequency of prescribing certain drugs, which makes it possible to assess the quality of medical care and compliance with standards. The Russian pharmaceutical market is dynamically developing and expanding, therefore, the commercial sector of drug circulation is a significant part of it and should be studied along with public procurement. Given the significant number of patients diagnosed with diabetes mellitus (DM) in our country, we considered it appropriate and interesting to analyze the structure and volume of turnover of antidiabetic drugs in the retail trade over five years.
AIM: to assess the dynamics of the cost and sales volumes of hypoglycemic drugs in the commercial sector for 2019–2020 compared to 2016.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: The analysis was made on the basis of the data of antidiabetic drugs purchases in Russian pharmacies in 2016 and 2019–2020, according to 95257 pharmacies data.
RESULTS: In 2020, compared to 2016, we see a significant increase in the number of packages purchases (+14,952,897 rub.) and the purchases total amount (+9,377,975,722 rub.), in parallel with the increase in average price per box of the hypoglycemic drug +199, 57 rub. The average price for DPP4 decreased. The cost per pack of metformin remains one of the lowest, second only to glibenclamide and gliclazide. The most expensive drugs include GLP1 group representatives. Insulin purchases have halved, when budget for GLP1 have increased by 10 times, for SGLT2 by 9.5 times, and for DPP4 by 2.1 times. In 2020, metformin gliclazide, a combination of glibencladimide with metformin, glibenclamide and vildgaliptin remain leaders in the number of purchased packages. The purchase leaders in terms of budget share are: metformin, gliclazide, liraglutide, vildagliptin and dapagliflozin
CONCLUSION: There are positive trends in the demand for more effective innovative hypoglycemic drugs, however, the affordability of drugs still dominates over the feasibility of their clinical use, and a high percentage of drug turnover in the commercial sector might indicates insufficient funding for drug provision for patients with diabetes mellitus.

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