Back pain can restrict activity and quality of everyday life and in some cases is a potentially chronic and even crippling condition. Therefore, back pain exerts a large economic impact on society. Due to the high prevalence of back pain, Datamonitor believes that the condition represents a commercially attractive target to pharmaceutical companies with an interest in the pain market.
Scope
Back pain overview including definition, risk factors, epidemiology and discussion of key unmet needs.
Summary of the drug classes currently used for the treatment of back pain and an update of the latest treatment guidelines.
Evaluation of three potentially viable market entry points to access the highly prevalent back pain population.
Stakeholder opinions based on qualitative interviews with seven US and European key opinion leaders in the field of back pain.
Highlights
Despite the high prevalence of back pain, no marketed pharmacological product possesses an indication for this condition. The strategy has the potential to confer several commercial advantages, not least product differentiation. However, important clinical and regulatory hurdles lie in the path to successful implementation of this approach.
The plethora of inexpensive generic analgesics represents a sizable barrier to pharmaceutical companies hoping to either penetrate or increase their market share in the back pain sector. Targeting the narrowly defined chronic neuropathic back pain population represents one path to success for manufacturers of non-traditional analgesics.
Sales of oral products dominate the pain market and only a handful major topical patch brands are currently available. Given the conceptual benefit of applying treatment to the site of pain, marketing further patch formulations towards back pain is could be commercially viable strategy for drug delivery companies.
Reasons to Purchase
Understand the prevalence of acute and chronic back pain, including the proportion of chronic back pain attributable to neuropathic mechanisms.
Identify the key clinical unmet needs in the treatment of back pain as gauged by the insight provided by interviewed key opinion leaders.
Evaluate the potential of three strategies which companies can employ in order to increase their presence in the back pain sector of the pain market.
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