Maintains Overweight
Friday, January 17, 2020
GW Pharma Analyst Expects $475M In Sales Of CBD Drug Expidiolex This Year
GW Pharmaceuticals PLC- ADR GWPH exceeded fourth-quarter estimates for Epidiolex sales, notching $108 million in revenue for the CBD drug, according to the company’s preliminary figures.
The earnings preview triggered a brief run in the stock this week — one bulls hope to sustain after six months of declines.
The GW Pharma Analyst
Bank of America Securities analyst Tazeen Ahmad maintained a Buy rating on GW Pharma with a $224 price objective.
The GW Pharma Thesis
In meetings this week, GW management assured Bank of America of a positive sales trajectory for its lead drug, Epidolex, Ahmad said in a Thursday note. (See her track record here.)
BofA anticipates $475 million in 2020 sales.
“We note that patients’ access to Epidiolex continues to look positive with 97% of all U.S. insured patients with coverage of Epidiolex in LGS/DS [Lennox-Gastaut and Dravet syndromes],” the analyst said.
The market for LGS and DS is expected to expand into the European Union this year with a planned launch in the U.K. and negotiations advancing in Spain and Italy, she said.
Additionally, GW is poised to penetrate a new domestic market with its application to treat tuberous sclerosis complex — a disease estimated to affect between 40,000 and 80,000 Americans, Ahmad said.
Studies of nabiximols for multiple sclerosis are expected to begin this year, and results from a trial of CBDV for autism are slated for release.
“We currently don’t assign standalone value for autism in our model,” the analyst said. “Positive data therefore in our view could provide upside potential near term.”
Sepsis Associated With Almost 20 Percent of Global Deaths
From 1990 to 2017, there was a decrease in sepsis incidence and mortality, although considerable regional variation exists, according to a study published online Jan. 16 in The Lancet.
Kristina E. Rudd, M.D., from the University of Pittsburgh, and colleagues used multiple cause-of-death data from 109 million individual death records to calculate mortality related to sepsis. The percentage of sepsis-related deaths by underlying Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study cause was modeled in each location worldwide. In-hospital sepsis-associated case fatality was calculated using data for 8.7 million individual hospital records.
The researchers found that an estimated 48.9 million incident cases of sepsis were recorded worldwide in 2017 and 11.0 million sepsis deaths were reported, corresponding to 19.7 percent of all global deaths. From 1990 to 2017, there was a 37.0 percent decrease in age-standardized sepsis incidence and a 52.8 percent decrease in mortality. Across regions, there was considerable variation in sepsis incidence and mortality; the highest burden was seen in sub-Saharan Africa, Oceania, south Asia, east Asia, and southeast Asia.
“We have shown a global trend of decreasing sepsis burden but, importantly, substantial differences between regions remain, in total number of sepsis deaths, age distribution of sepsis deaths, and case-fatality,” the authors write. “These differences by location are alarming and deserve urgent attention from the global health, research, and policy communities.”
Several authors disclosed financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
U.S. Drug Deaths Might Be Twice as High as Thought
Drugs may kill twice as many Americans as government records suggest, a new study claims.
In 2016, the reported rate of drug-related deaths among 15- to 64-year-olds was 9% — compared with about 4% several years earlier — with 63,000 deaths classified as drug-related.
However, the new study concluded that the actual number of drug-related deaths could have been about 142,000 in 2016.
“Drugs can kill in other ways,” said study co-author Samuel Preston. He is a professor of sociology and a member of the Population Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
“Infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS and hepatitis, impaired judgment, suicide, circulatory disease — these are all affected by drug use. People who are perpetual drug users have much higher mortality in general,” Preston explained in a university news release.
For the study, his team analyzed more than 44 million death certificates issued nationwide over 18 years and identified just over 667,000 that were coded as drug-related.
But the team’s models showed that these drug-coded deaths — which include drug overdoses and mental and behavioral disorders related to drugs — accounted for only about half of all drug-associated deaths.
“It’s obvious that the drug epidemic is a major American disaster,” Preston said. “The basic records being kept are annual reports on the number of deaths from drug overdose. But that’s only part of the picture.”
According to study co-author Dana Glei, “The drug epidemic is probably killing a lot more Americans than we think. That’s the main point we’re trying to make.” Glei is senior research investigator at the Center for Population and Health at Georgetown University, in Washington, D.C.
The study found that drug use decreased life expectancy after age 15 by an average of 1.4 years for men and by 0.7 years for women. But those figures were more than two times higher in West Virginia, the state hardest hit by the country’s opioid crisis.
Glei said that the drug use-related decreases in life expectancy “may not sound like a lot, but it’s a big effect. It’s big enough to account for the recent reversal of life-expectancy trends in the United States.”
West Virginia had the highest rates of drug-associated deaths among 15- to 64-year-olds: 39% for men and 27% for women. Other states with high rates included Massachusetts, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Ohio.
The lowest rate for both sexes was in Nebraska, with Iowa, Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota rounding out the five states with the lowest rates among men.
In terms of regions, rates are high in the Southwest, Appalachia and New England, and low in the Great Plains, the findings showed.
The study was published Jan. 15 in the journal PLOS One.
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