Perrigo moves in allergy symptom treatment market

Parents of children with indoor and outdoor allergies soon will have another option when it comes to treating their children.

In the fiscal first-quarter of 2011, Allegan-based Perrigo Co. expects to ship over-the-counter cherry flavored cetirizine syrup. Perrigo already offers grape flavor cetrizine syrup.

The product will be sold under store brand labels. It is comparable to Zyrtec Children’s Allergy Syrup made by McNeil Consumer Healthcare. Brand sales for Zyrtec products were $580 million for the last 52 weeks ending July 4.

The cherry flavored allergy relief syrup received FDA approval July 26.

Earlier this summer, Perrigo announced it has acquired exclusive U.S. store brand rights to sell and distribute allergy symptom treatment for adults — the over-the-counter versions of Fexofenadine HCI in 180 mg and 60 mg tablets, and Pseudoephedrine in 120 mg tablets. The Perrigo product will be the generic version of of Sanofi-Aventis’ Allegra and Allegra D-12 products. Sanofi-Aventis has applied to the FDA for the prescription to over-the-counter switch of these drugs.

Generic competition entered the Fexofenadine prescription market in 2005. Before that, Allegra 180 mg and 60 mg had combined annual sales of approximately $1.5 billion, and in 2009, Allegra D-12 had annual sales of $600 million, according to data provided by Wolters-Kluwer.

“This is another example of Perrigo’s strategic focus on making quality healthcare more affordable to American consumers by introducing new Rx-to-OTC switch products,” says Perrigo’s Chairman and CEO Joseph C. Papa.

Perrigo Company develops, manufactures and distributes over the counter and generic prescription pharmaceuticals, nutritional products, active pharmaceutical ingredients and consumer products. The company is the world’s largest manufacturer of OTC pharmaceutical products for the store brand market.

Writer: Kathy Jennings
Source: Joseph C. Papa, Perrigo Co.