Stomach ulcer drug rebamipide market makes over KRW 100 bln

Benefiting from NDMA contamination, prescription soars after 2019 Q4 especially Huons and Kyungdong generics

Last year’s rebamipide market generates 110.6 billion won with 15% growth

The impurity contamination in ranitidine was discovered in 2019 has in turn expanded a gastritis treatment rebamipide market.

 

Although the market was sluggish for a long time, rebamipide prescription surged and broke through the 100 billion won point last year.

 

The impurity contamination incident impacted the entire stomach disorder drug market including H2 receptor antagonist, proton pump inhibitor (PPI) and wormwood-induced natural medicine.

 

A pharmaceutical market research firm UBIST reported on Feb.

 

2, the rebamipide prescription market last year generated 110.6 billion won, growing by 14.8 percent compared to the year before.

 

The market’s annual growth has been stagnating around 4 percent, marking 85.4 billion won, 88.2 billion won and 91.9 billion in year 2016 through 2018, respectively.

 

But the figure soared 20.4 percent last year compared to two years ago.

 

Rebamipide treats gastroduodenal ulcers by increasing the blood flow in the stomach mucous to protect them.

 

The substance is also indicated to treat stomach ulcer and enhance mucosal defense.

 

About three decades ago, Korea Otsuka Pharmaceutical released an original Mucosta, and 239 generics entered the market since 2003.

 

Regardless of the expanded options, the prescription volume did not change significantly.

 

But similar to PPI and wormwood-induced natural medicine, the industry experts say the rebamipide market benefited from the impurity contamination incident.

 

The South Korean Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) banned the sales of all products of H2 receptor antagonizing antiulcer drug ranitidine due to unacceptable amount of cancerous N-Nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) found in late September 2019.

 

Ranitidine drugs used to form a large market making about 180 billion won annually as of 2018.

 

But the overall sales ban drove the prescribers to seek after other drugs with similar indications.

 

The analysis on quarterly prescription volume of rebamipide found the volume started increasing from the fourth quarter of 2019.

 

In the third quarter of 2019, the rebamipide drug prescription generated 21.5 billion won only, but it leapt to 29.6 billion won as of 2019 fourth quarter.

 

Although patients avoided visiting hospitals amid COVID-19 last year and the general prescription volume faltered, the quarterly rebamipide prescription volume was maintained at around 27 billion won.

 

The prescription volume by item showed fluctuating differences.

 

Generally, the generics had more significant increase in prescription.

 

The original Mucosta’s prescription fell 5.5 percent last year, despite making 17.3 billion won, compared to the year before.

 

The best-selling generic Samjin Pharm’s Bamedin prescription also fell by 3.3 percent last year compared to the previous year and marked 4.6 billion won.

 

Meanwhile, Huons’ Mucoramine prescription soared by 61.9 percent compared to the year before and narrowed the gap with Bamedin.

 

KyungDong Pharmaceutical’s Rebamide prescription volume grew 11.8 percent from the year before and marked 3.8 billion won, when CMG Pharmaceutical’s Remipid and Celltrion Pharm’s Rebat grew by 11.3 percent and 35.8 percent, respectively.

 

The industry projects the rebamipide market competition would get even more intensified this year with extended release products launching.

 

Four South Korean companies like Yuhan Corporation, GC Pharma, Daewoong Pharmaceutical and Daewon Pharmaceutical won the health authority’s approval on extended release rebamipides late last year.

 

And the authority also granted approval on Korea Otsuka Pharmaceutical’s Mucosta SR tablet last month.

 

Although some of their indications differ from each other a bit, the administration convenience improved from three times a day to twice-daily.