Attention Deficit Pays at Shire

Booming Business

As LeFever fights to keep her job, pharmaceutical companies continue to rake in huge sums for their ADHD drugs.

Last year, one of Eli Lilly's newest drugs -- the ADHD treatment Strattera -- became one of its most popular as well. Sales of Strattera rocketed 80% to $667 million, far outpacing the growth posted by every other product line.

Johnson & Johnson also counts its ADHD drug Concerta, obtained through an $11.8 billion purchase of Alza in 2001, as a particularly strong performer. Even Novartis (NVS Quote) continues to make plenty of money on the old standby Ritalin.

But Shire now boasts the most popular ADHD drug of all. Last year, sales of Adderall jumped 28% -- capturing one-fourth of the crucial U.S. market -- as physicians wrote more and more prescriptions. Shire is now banking much of its future on ADHD as it races to bring out four new treatments for the disorder in 2005 alone.

"As the ADHD market develops, new choices of treatment are emerging," Shire CEO Matthew Emmens recently explained. And "Shire aims to have a range of medicines in its ADHD portfolio."

Yet some believe the ADHD drug market has already grown too large.

William Pelham -- a prominent researcher involved with trials of both Concerta and Adderall -- says a major government study, sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health, showed that behavioral therapy often eliminates the need for ADHD drugs altogether. During that one-year trial, he says, 75% of the children who relied on behavioral treatments functioned well without ADHD drugs. Moreover, he adds, most of those children remained off the drugs a full year later.

"What this means to me is that two-thirds of ADHD kids could be taken off the medications," Pelham says. "I'm not saying the drugs are all bad. They're useful for many children. But I do think they are grossly overused as a first line of intervention."