Pfizer diabetes treatment rejected for NHS use

The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) has said that the Pfizer insulin product Exubera should not be prescribed on the NHS.

Pfizer’s product, which is an inhaled treatment for both type 1 and type 2 diabetes, was said by NICE to not offer sufficient benefits over the common injected treatments to justify the more than ?1,000 that it would cost each patient a year.

“Our review of the evidence indicated that inhaled insulin should not be recommended for the diabetic (type 1 or type 2) population as a whole because it could not be proven to be more clinically or cost effective than existing treatments,” said Andrea Sutcliffe, the NICE deputy chief executive.

“The clinical experts we asked advised us that using injected insulin is not usually a concern for the majority of people with diabetes.”

Pfizer has said that NICE is rejecting information from the US and Europe that has suggested the benefits of using the inhaled diabetes treatment.

The company said that by not recommending Exubera for use on the NHS, NICE is forcing diabetes patients to “keep enduring the burden of multiple daily injections”.

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