Even an absolutely healthy (or rather, unexplored) person is sometimes forced to take medicine to relieve headaches or toothaches. Although most drugs are expensive, you don’t need to take a loan or sell a kidney to buy them.
However, the cost of some drugs can drive into despondency not only the average Russian, but also a very rich person. We present you the top 10 most expensive drugs in the world.
10. Ilaris
The price per annual course for 1 patient varies from $ 379,000 to $ 462,000.
Ilaris is an injectable immunosuppressant approved for the treatment of acute gouty arthritis, systemic juvenile idiopathic arthritis in young children, as well as cryopyrinassociated periodic syndrome (CAPS), a group of rare diseases caused by mutations in certain genes.
People with CAPS often have bouts of fever and inflammation without standard causes, such as infections or viruses.
9. Demser
An annual course costs between 96,000 and 472,000 dollars.
Excessive amounts of norepinephrine and adrenaline are produced in the body of patients with pheochromocytoma, a hormone-active tumor of the adrenal gland, which raise blood pressure. To prevent this condition, patients with pheochromocytoma are forced to take a drug called Demers.
This drug is also used for long-term treatment of symptoms associated with a tumor.
8. Folotyn
It costs about 345,000 - 500,000 per year, per patient.
This is the last resort medicine for those with recurrent or refractory peripheral T-cell lymphoma, a rare and extremely aggressive type of cancer. It applies only if other treatments have failed.
Moreover, even the use of Folotin does not guarantee improved survival without disease progression or at least a general extension of the patient's life expectancy.
7. Soliris
The price tag for 1 patient per year is $ 600,000.
This medicine is used to treat genetic diseases - one of the most expensive groups of diseases. Solyris can be prescribed in case of:
- a rare and life-threatening chronic blood disease called Atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome. It affects both children and adults, and leads to the constant activation of the part of the immune system responsible for the destruction of pathogens and the removal of dead cells. Simply put, the immune system begins to attack its own, healthy body tissues.
- Paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria. The rarity of this condition is evidenced by the fact that for every million people there are no more than 15.9 cases of PNH. In patients, blood cells begin to die during sleep. Why - no one knows.
At one time, Soliris was considered the most expensive medicine in the world, but now there are drugs, compared to which Soliris give almost nothing.
In 2019, Russian media reported that the pharmaceutical company Generium registered the Russian analogue of Soliris (eculizumab). It is called Elizaria and will cost a quarter cheaper than the original. All components of the drug, including the production of substances for it, are domestic. This is the most expensive drug in Russia.
6. Lumizyme
The price of the annual course is $ 650,000.
One of the most expensive medications in the world is used to treat Pompe disease, in which a person breaks down the processes of glycogen breakdown in nerve and muscle cells.
This is due to the fact that the patient’s body lacks an enzyme called “acidic α-1,4-glucosidase”. And Lumizim (aka (alglucosidase alpha) replaces the missing enzyme.
Untreated, Pompe disease leads to death from heart or respiratory failure in children. If the disease arose in adulthood, a person slowly loses sight due to myopia, and he has liver damage.
5. Brineura
An annual course of treatment will cost $ 700,000.
Brineira is a super-expensive medicine that is used in the treatment of Batten’s late childhood illness (it’s also Bielszewski-Jansky disease). It is quite rare, in about 1 person per 200,000. With this hereditary pathology, vision quickly worsens, up to complete blindness, there are often cramps that cannot be removed with medication, and the patient’s motor activity is seriously impaired.
Although Brineira does not provide a complete cure, it slows down the onset of disability and alleviates the symptoms of the disease in young patients 3 years of age and older.
4. Luxturna
The price of treatment is $ 850,000.
Loss of vision is one of the most terrible troubles that can happen to a person. The prospect of forever in the dark is not as scary as the need to part with $ 850,000. Unless, of course, you have them.
The drug's developer, Spark Therapeutics, originally planned to sell its development for $ 1 million. But then she reduced her appetites at the insistence of insurance companies.
A miraculous drug, whose principle of action is based on gene therapy, returns vision not to everyone, but only to those who are affected by a rare inherited form of blindness. For example, in the United States, about 2,000 people are affected.
To cure blindness, a single injection of Luxturna into each eye is sufficient (425 thousand dollars per injection, respectively). This novelty compares favorably with other drugs that need to be taken for a long time, or even a lifetime.
3. Ravicti
The cost of one year of treatment for a patient is $ 1.2 million.
Since June 2010, the drug Ravikti received the status of “medicine for orphans” (a drug used for rare diseases).
Ravikti is used to treat patients with a violation of the urea cycle. And although the name of the disease does not sound serious, there is a great danger behind it.
- Patients lack some liver enzymes, because of this the body is not able to get rid of nitrogen waste.
- As a result, toxic ammonia begins to accumulate in the blood of adults and children.
- And this can lead to irreversible brain damage, coma and death.
2. Carbaglu
For the annual course you will have to pay about 1.3 million dollars.
In the human liver, there is an enzyme with the long name N-Acetylglutamate synthase. He is responsible for processing the excess nitrogen that is formed during the metabolism of proteins. And with hyperammonemia, this enzyme is not enough, and ammonia quickly accumulates in the blood, it is also nitrogen hydride. This leads to coma and subsequent death.
This dangerous condition also prevents the drug Carbaglu. And given that the lack of the enzyme is a lifelong condition, you will have to take this drug for as long as the patient lives.
1. Zolgensma
The price of the most expensive drug in the world is $ 2.1 million.
This drug received the “green light” in the United States more recently - in May 2019 - for the treatment of pediatric spinal muscular atrophy. Solgensma replaces the mutated “defective” gene with a functional one.
To completely cure the disease, just one intravenous injection is enough, it just costs fantastically expensive. And the tool is aimed at a very small group of people, because around the world about 2500-3500 children suffer from spinal muscular atrophy. This disease progresses rapidly, and by the age of two sick children who do not receive the necessary treatment usually die of respiratory failure.
