Enbrel Sales Investigated
The New Jersey Attorney General's office is investigating Amgen for allegedly promoting Enbrel for off-label uses and for violating privacy laws to get access to potentially new patients. On Jan. 14, Attorney General Anne Milgram subpoenaed Amgen for all documents relating to the marketing, sale, and prescription of Enbrel between July 2002 and the present. The inquiry follows a lawsuit filed by two former sales representatives who alleged that the company encouraged them to search physicians' records for patients with mild psoriasis who might be potential candidates for Enbrel. The former employees also claimed to have directly contacted insurers to seek reimbursement for the drug. An Amgen spokeswoman said that the company will cooperate fully with the investigation and that the employees' claims “are completely without merit.” The company expects salespeople to follow the Code of Conduct. “Amgen does not instruct sales representatives to proactively review patient files or promote off-label for any reason,” said the spokeswoman.
NIH Research Centers Launched
The National Institutes of Health has funded three new centers to study translational research for lupus, posttraumatic osteoarthritis, and psoriasis. The lupus research efforts will be headquartered at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas where researchers will use mouse models to identify the genetic background of developmental stages of the disease. The researchers received $5 million from the NIH to fund their work. Researchers at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, will work on new methods to delay the onset of osteoarthritis. Officials at the NIH awarded $7.5 million to fund that research. At the Center for Psoriasis Research Translation at Case Western Reserve University and the University Hospitals of Cleveland, researchers will conduct a preliminary efficacy study to test novel photodynamic therapy for psoriasis. The NIH awarded $6.37 million to fund the work on psoriasis.
Arthritis Prevalence On the Rise
The overall prevalence of arthritis is expected to rise by 40% by the year 2030, however, the prevalence of rheumatoid arthritis may be starting to fall, according to a recently published study (Arthritis Rheumatism. 2008;58:15-25). The analysis, which was conducted by the National Arthritis Data Workgroup, relies on a variety of surveys and databases to estimate the prevalence and number of affected individuals with rheumatic conditions. The work group is a consortium of experts in epidemiology that was formed to help provide a single source of national data on the impact of rheumatologic diseases. The researchers estimate that about 1.2 million adults in the United States (roughly 0.6%), have rheumatoid arthritis, based on 2005 data. But these figures are down from the 2.1 million adults who were estimated to have the condition in 1998. While the decline in rheumatoid arthritis identified in this study is consistent with other recent findings, the researchers could not point to a clear explanation. However, the researchers identified the aging population as the factor driving up overall arthritis prevalence figures. “This increase suggests that overall arthritis will have a growing impact on the health care and public health systems in the future, one that needs to be anticipated in order to provide the early diagnosis and interventions that could help reduce that impact,” the researchers wrote.