Acute pain drug market will increase to $17.4bn in G7

Decision Resources' latest report looks at the prospects for the acute pain drug market over the next ten years.

The market for acute pain drugs will increase to $17.4 billion by 2021 in the so-called G7 countries of the US, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK and Japan, a report suggests.

According to the latest Pharmacor report from Decision Resources, sales of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and opioid analgesics made up the majority of total major-market sales in acute pain.

Andrea Buurma, an analyst at Decision Resources, claimed that this trend "will continue through 2021".

She added: "Similar to the chronic pain market, opioid analgesics and NSAIDs continue to hold leading market status in the acute pain space."

Ten new acute pain analgesics are due to launch in the G7 over the next ten years, although Decision Resources does not expect any of these to have a significant impact on the market.

This is because they will mainly be reformulations of existing compounds and will address small areas of unmet need.

The report also reveals noticeable regional variations in drug use, with doctors in the US being more inclined to prescribe strong opioid analgesics than those in Europe and Japan.

Japanese doctors are more likely to prescribe NSAIDs or celecoxib, while European physicians more frequently rely on the dual-acting opioid analgesic tramadol.