Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease | Pharmacor | G7 | 2015
Last Updated 14 December 2015
The large therapeutic market for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a disease that is closely associated with smoking, continues to expand. The prevalence of COPD increases as populations age, and this increase is coupled with a rising diagnosis rate as efforts to promote awareness of the disease continue and the use of spirometry to diagnose COPD becomes more widespread. The expanding COPD patient population has great unmet need because truly disease-modifying therapies are lacking. Currently, treatment is dominated by bronchodilators that help alleviate symptoms but do not reverse the progression of the disease. Polypharmacy is common, and therapies that offer incremental improvements over existing treatment will gain use because they alleviate some of the burden associated with complex regimens. Major-market COPD sales will grow steadily over our forecast period owing to the uptake of once-daily, fixed-dose combinations and the increasing drug-treated population.
