, and more than half of the 20 biggest-selling drugs for the year are regularly prescribed to patients with diabetes, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
Drugs used by patients with diabetes also took up half of the next 10 spots in the list: gabapentin was 11th, insulin detemir was 12th, metformin was 14th, insulin lispro was 16th, and metformin-sitagliptin was 20th, according to the MEPS data.
The drugs in the MEPS top 10 for 2015 – the most recent year for which data are available – that are not commonly prescribed for diabetes were the asthma/chronic obstructive pulmonary drug fluticasone-salmeterol (third at $6.7 billion), the gastroesophageal reflux disease drug esomeprazole (fifth at $5.3 billion), and aripiprazole (sixth at $5.2 billion), which is used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.