"Pharmaceutical innovation and the burden of disease in developing and developed countries"
Frank R. Lichtenberg, Columbia University
This study contains three different analyses of the relationship across diseases between pharmaceutical innovation and the burden of disease in developed and developing countries. The first analysis looks at relationship between the number of disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) attributable to a disease in 2001, by region, and the number of drugs that have been developed to treat the disease and that are sold in the U.S. The second analysis examines the relationship between the number of DALYs attributable to a disease in 2001, and the number of drugs launched to treat the disease in approximately 50 countries during the period 1982-2002. The last analysis examines the relationship between cancer incidence (the number of people diagnosed with a particular form of cancer), and the number of articles published in scientific journals pertaining to drug therapy for that form of cancer. All three analyses indicate that the amount of pharmaceutical innovation is positively related to the burden of disease in developed countries but not to the burden of disease in developing countries. The amount of other medical innovation also appears to be positively related to the burden of disease in developed countries but not to the burden of disease in developing countries, although the developed-vs.-developing difference is smaller than in the case of pharmaceutical innovation.