Fluoxetine Prescription Data

We obtained the estimates for the prescription trends and dispensed numbers for fluoxetine from IMS Health USA, the leading international provider of data on drug use to the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries. The data for fluoxetine were extracted from their extensive National Prescription Audit database in Philadelphia, which provides information based on dispensed prescriptions from retail, mail service, and LTC pharmacies. National Prescription Audit data are projected to a national level from a sample of over 20,000 retail pharmacies. These data are representative of the total dispensed prescriptions for fluoxetine from when it was introduced to the market in 1988–2002. The dispensed numbers were reported in thousands for the formulations Prozac (SMRY 0188 LLY), Prozac Weekly (SMRY 0301 LLY), and fluoxetine-HCl (SMRY 0000 USA). The fluoxetine-HCl generic formulation and Prozac Weekly formulation were first introduced in 2001. The numbers for the Prozac Weekly regimen were multiplied by seven in order to account for the single weekly dispensation of this type of formulation and to adjust for the dispensation numbers in correlation with rest of the daily-dispensed data.

The fluoxetine data on the percent of dispensation for specific disorders were obtained independently of the yearly dispensed data from IMS Health for the period of 2002–2004, with 2002 being the first year that they kept track of this type of information in their database. These data provided a specific list of disorders that fluoxetine was prescribed for and the relative percentage of dispensation of fluoxetine in the given year for these disorders. See Table 2 for suicide rates and fluoxetine prescription data for the period 1988–2002.