Translation of a-t 2024; 55: 87

HUMAN INSULINS ARE INCREASINGLY DISAPPEARING FROM THE MARKET

Human insulins are increasingly disappearing from the market in Germany. I can still remember the advert from the 1980s: "human insulin - you can't get more human than that" (a-t 1996; No. 3: 26-7). After Sanofi stopped in 2023, Novo Nordisk is now planning to stop selling human insulins too. Lilly, the third large provider, may soon follow suit. What price increase is linked to the reduced provision of human insulins?

N.N. (name etc. stated in a-t 11/2024)
Conflict of interest: none

By stopping their production of human insulins, Novo Nordisk and Sanofi say they want to strengthen the availability and use of modern therapies around the world¹ and safeguard the production of its more frequently prescribed insulins.² This means it is ultimately about the shift to the prescription of the more lucrative insulin analogues.

The Drug Prescription Report estimates the average costs of a defined daily dose (DDD) of 40 units of human insulin as EUR 1.17 and of insulin analogues as around EUR 1.55, so just under a third more.³ Between 2007 and 2023,⁴ the frequency with which human insulins were being prescribed and charged to the statutory health insurance providers has dropped continuously from 514 million DDD to 115 million DDD. If all of the human insulins prescribed in 2023 had been switched to analogues, this would have resulted in additional costs of around EUR 44 million. A total of 634 million DDD of insulin analogues were prescribed in 2023.⁴ The statutory health insurance providers spent around one billion euros on this, so around EUR 245 million more than the corresponding quantity of DDD of human insulins would have cost. A further increase in costs is expected with the new insulin analogue for single weekly administration, icodec (AWIQLI) (see a-t 2024; 55: 84-6), –Ed.

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