Autoimmune Disease Series: Strategies for Success in the Challenging Sjögren’s Syndrome Market

Sjögren's syndrome (SS) is one of the most common autoimmune diseases, affecting more than 1 million individuals in the United States. Although the majority of cases are relatively benign, in more-severe cases, patients can develop life-threatening symptoms and complications, including renal or liver failure and B-cell lymphoma.

At this time SS has no cure, and treatment is focused primarily on the alleviation of symptoms and the prevention of long-term organ damage. Because SS affects multiple organs within the body, polypharmacy is common, with rheumatologists surveyed by Decision Resources estimating that more than 90% of their SS patients receive more than one treatment. The development of a single agent that addresses multiple symptoms of the disease is a considerable unmet need in SS treatment.

This report provides an overview of SS, including the disease's etiology, diagnosis, and symptoms. Decision Resources surveyed U.S. rheumatologists to determine their prescribing preferences for SS; we present the most commonly prescribed prescription agents used to treat the disease. The prevalence of SS is high compared with that of many other infl ammatory diseases, and we discuss the current SS prevalence and our forecast for patient population growth over the next ten years. Perhaps owing to this high patient population, signifi cant development is ongoing for SS, and we discuss late-stage emerging agents. Finally, we present our outlook for the SS market.