Eisai and Pfizer UK officially launch appeal against NICE ruling

Eisai and Pfizer UK have officially appealed against NICE’s ruling that patients with newly diagnosed, mild Alzheimer’s disease should not receive free treatments on the NHS.

NICE made the ruling based on an effectiveness versus cost efficiency judgement from a panel of experts. The Alzheimer’s Society and various pharmaceutical companies including Pfizer, Eisai, Shire, Novartis and Lundbeck, have condemned the ruling, with Shire warning that it would be a “grave error”.

Eisai manufactures Aricept, a drug used for Alzheimers that is co-marketed by Pfizer in the UK. The companies are appealing on three points: firstly that NICE “failed to act fairly” and in accordance with its own appraisal procedure, that the decision was “perverse”, and finally that NICE exceeded its powers.

Dr Paul Hooper, managing director of Eisai UK, stated: “We are appealing against the fairness and the transparency of the processes NICE used to reach its conclusion on mild Alzheimer’s disease – but mainly we are appealing against the perverse nature of that conclusion.”

Pfizer UK’s managing director, Dr Olivier Brandicourt, added: “NICE appears to have used an arbitrary decision making process and has kept details of the model used in their cost effectiveness calculations secret.”

“Alone in the world, England will be saying patients must lose the chance to fight Alzheimer?s disease at an early stage,” he concluded.

However, one expert from the University of Birmingham said the NICE ruling was not based on cost pressures but on the effectiveness of the drugs in question.

Having conducted a five-year study into the most commonly-prescribed Alzheimer’s drugs, Professor Richard Gray told Channel Four News: “[We] found that you could actually hardly tell whether the patients were taking the actual drug or taking the placebo.”

© Adfero Ltd