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BLOG: Pigs fly! Akorn begins AzaSite support
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“ This is Phil Shuman reporting from LA , where lions have just been seen lying down with lambs. ”
Totally didn’t see this one coming. As I noted in my last baleful blog on the abandonment of AzaSite, I had forsaken all hope of ever being able to prescribe it without creating myriad hardships for my patients, my staff and local pharmacists. Imagine my surprise and delight when I learned that Akorn is stepping to the plate and doing pretty much everything I’ve asked for over the last 3 years. I’m not kidding when I say we were literally dancing in the lanes at SkyVision.
As you know, AzaSite is only FDA approved for the treatment of bacterial conjunctivitis. The original bottle size (1.5 mL) goes along with the on-label indication. In our clinics, roughly 95% of prescriptions are written for blepharitis, meibomian gland dysfunction or dysfunctional tear syndrome; 1.5 mL doesn’t go very far when you are using AzaSite chronically. Purchasing those tiny bottles at $200+ a pop gets pretty painful.
Akorn is doing right by AzaSite on both of those issues. Very shortly you will be able to write for a 2.5 mL bottle that contains roughly 50 drops. That’s 25 days of treatment, and if you use it every other night or twice a week, your patient is easily getting a month of treatment from a single bottle. As of this moment, Akorn is using the Eagle specialty pharmacy (which carries NP Cosopt and Zioptan) through which it is offering price support capping patient cost at $45 for commercial insurance.
I kid you not.
Evaporative dry eye disease associated with MGD is the most common of our DED challenges. We have LipiFlow (TearScience), intense pulsed light and BlephEx (BlephEx LLC) among other episodic treatments. Foulks, Pflugfelder and others have shown that azithromycin works at the molecular level to normalize the carbon chain structure of tear lipids. This in turn lowers the melting point of the lipid and allows for more normal tear function. AzaSite is therefore an integral part of a comprehensive DED program. Akorn has done this medicine a solid. The company and all of its representatives deserve our open gratitude and support in return.
In other news, NORAD is reporting large flocks of flying pigs in the skies above LA. Our man Phil Shuman is now at Exposition Park reporting on this “never event.”
Disclosure: White reports he is a consultant to Shire, Allergan, TearLab, Rendia, TearScience, Omeros and Sun, and is a speaker for Shire, Allergan, Omeros and Sun.