IMS Health presents data on emergency contraception
12.01.2015 18:14
In light of the EU Commission's decision to remove the emergency contraceptive "EllaOne" containing the active ingredient ulipristal acetate from prescription-only status, and the subsequent announcement by Federal Health Minister Hermann Gröhe that the second emergency contraceptive containing the active ingredient levonorgestrel will soon also be available without a prescription in pharmacies, IMS Health analyzed how the prescription and dispensing of emergency contraception has developed over the last ten years.
An analysis of the pharmacy market reveals that the morning-after pill was dispensed more than twice as often in 2013 as in 2004. While pharmacies dispensed approximately 236,100 packs in 2004, this figure had risen to around 488,100 packs ten years later. The volume was distributed almost equally between the two active ingredients, levonorgestrel and ulipristal acetate. It has been observed that since the introduction of ulipristal acetate in 2009, there has been significant growth in sales of preparations containing this active ingredient, while sales of levonorgestrel-based preparations have declined.
This relationship is particularly evident in 2013: Compared to the previous year, sales of ulipristal acetate pills increased by 56.7 percent, while emergency contraception with levonorgestrel decreased by 15.6 percent. According to IMS analysts, this could be attributed to the fact that ulipristal acetate was declared the new standard method for emergency contraception by the German Society for Gynecological Endocrinology and Reproductive Medicine and the Professional Association of Gynecologists in February 2013.
The trend of increasing dispensing of emergency contraceptives is reflected in the analysis of a sample of gynecological practices. IMS Health examined 99 gynecological practices in Germany between 2004 and 2013 to make objective statements about prescribing patterns for the morning-after pill in recent years.. The proportion of practices in this sample that prescribed the "morning-after pill" rose from 39 percent (2004) to 99 percent (2013). It can be observed that as early as 2006, over 90 percent of gynecologists prescribed this emergency contraceptive.
An analysis of all contraceptive users in the 99 gynecological practices revealed that the proportion of users of the "morning-after pill" rose steadily from 0.6 percent in 2004 to 3.9 percent in 2013. In 2004, there were eleven patients with an emergency contraceptive prescription per gynecological practice; by 2013, this number had increased to 30 patients per practice.
Furthermore, it can be observed that approximately half of the patients who received a prescription for the morning-after pill also received prescriptions for other contraceptives in the same year. This means that the morning-after pill was prescribed in addition to other contraceptive methods. Finally, a review of the healthcare data reveals that, during the period from 2004 to 2013, a patient receiving the morning-after pill received an average of 1.1 prescriptions per year, indicating that its use was not continuous.