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The Prevalence of Erectile Dysfunction in the United States

Erectile dysfunction is broadly defined a consistent inability to either obtain or to maintain an erection so that the latter is sufficient to have proper sexual intercourse. Complete erectile dysfunction, also known as impotence is, on the other hand, characterized by an inability to have penetrative intercourse at any stage. Physicians know that there are certain risk factors for erectile dysfunction. If you think of all the risk factors for cardiac abnormalities, those are mostly also the factors that can be applied for erectile dysfunction. These risk factors include:

• Diabetes,
• Hypertension,
• Elevated cholesterol levels,
• Obesity,
• Alcohol consumption.

The above co-factors make a risk for erectile dysfunction greater if you consider the general male population in the United States.  Nowadays, there is a variety of different medications specifically engineered to treat erectile dysfunction. The most known include Viagra, Cialis, Levitra, Stendra, and several others. These medications were not available on the market for men 30 years ago. There were very few things doctors could offer their patients suffering from erectile dysfunction. That is why most ED-suffering men sort of stayed in the closet and did not open up about their decease anybody, even their physicians.

What you can say if everybody knows there are no effective treatments? The breakthrough in the treatment of erectile dysfunction happened when the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer patented Viagra in 1998. The blue pill became an instant hit of sales and made a patent-holding company huge profit. Men could take prescribed Viagra orally to enhance their erection. While Viagra was followed by similar treatments of Cialis and Levitra in 2003, the original blue pill has remained the chief treatment for ED owing to its pioneering brand.  Today, In the United States alone, erectile dysfunction is affecting over 17 million males; which is roughly 20 percent of men over 20 years of age.

The End of the U.S. Viagra Patent for Pfizer

The U.S. market has been the last remaining bastion for Pfizer in selling the brand’s top hit Viagra. The patent for Viagra is set to expire in 2020, following similar expiration for the major ED treatment in the UK in 2013 and an infamous invalidation for insufficient disclosure of the Viagra patent in Canada in 2012. Since Pfizer’s Viagra emerged in the pharmaceutical market back in 1998, the pill has been consumed by an impressive number of 62 million men across the globe. The numbers are stunning but easily explained when we consider how many men actually suffer from erectile dysfunction and complications associated with the disease.

Viagra’s largest competitor has been Cialis with its active ingredient Tadalafil, being a regular medication for the treatment of erectile dysfunction thrown to the market in 2003. At the same, the pharmaceutical market had been flooded by hordes of counterfeit products for ED. However, regardless of competitors and fakes, Viagra has managed to firmly grip of around 50 percent of the market of ED treatments worldwide. Until now when the patent is about to expire.

What’s the Catch With Patents?

The Viagra patent case is summing up the challenges that medications manufacturers across the globe have to face. Patenting is necessary to secure monopoly rights for the set timeframe of twenty years to cover millions of dollars of investments in research and development into newly developed medications. While Viagra has been a superhit that provided its manufacturer with overwhelming profits, most new developments do not turn out to hit like that.

Pharmaceutical manufacturers need a patent as a safeguard for the investment. Without patents, manufacturers would stop investing in un-patentable, but promising compounds. On the other hand, a monopoly is inevitably leading to high-end prices and can be a challenge for markets in countries with an overall median low income.

Services for Viagra Refills

Whenever there is a demand, there is a supply; this simple marketing adage is true when it comes down to bridging the gap between the number of people needing to buy ED pills, and the number of consumers who actually can afford getting refills regularly. Being a lifestyle drug, sildenafil features a notoriously high price. At the same time, its very nature presupposes a consistent pattern of use.

How does this work? Mostly based in Canada where prices for pharmaceutical products are traditionally much lower, platforms for inexpensive ED products offer a wide range of generic viagra tablets alongside with good deals on original medications. Thanks to direct supply chain from generic manufacturers, these services can offer significantly reduced prices, discounts and trial pills.

The added benefits of such offers are increased customization of potency treatment. Besides, these resources work in line with privacy laws, guaranteeing full confidentiality and anonymity of services. Compared to regular drugstores, they thus help to save money, efforts, secrecy, all while yielding better results and increased customer satisfaction.

Generics as a Safe Alternative for Patented Medications

Generics and patent-free medications have gained a reputation for being much more affordable than their patented counterparts. Additionally, medications are leaning towards higher prices in economies with stronger and stricter patents than in economies with weaker patenting. The United States is the country with one of the strictest and more scrutinized patenting procedures. On the other hand, such a big pharma market as India falls into the second category. In most European Union countries as well as in Canada, there are implemented and strictly outlined by respective Governments price controlling mechanisms to handle the higher medication prices clocked by pharmaceutical monopolies that own this or that patent. The next decade is likely to witness Canadian drugs enjoy a considerable rise in popularity, All of that makes reliable manufacturers of generics the companies of choice for portals providing comprehensive support for men’s health.

The Sidetrack for Manufacturing Companies

It is too early to talk about the complete elimination of patent-holding big producers from the market. There is always a way for an inventor of the medication to circumvent the existing rules.

There are both legitimate and illegitimate methods that exist to sidetrack these rules. To illustrate with a familiar example, the initial Viagra’s manufacturer Pfizer can legitimately utilize Viagra’s trademark in order to extend or sustain their monopoly on the medication already after their patent hits an inevitable expiration date. The company can manage to do the trick by stopping generics manufacturers of Viagra from shaping the pill into its recognizable diamond shape as well as coloring the pill in familiar blue.

To cite another popular way to resist the flooding of the market by generics, out of patent medications manufacturers practice paying generics producers for delaying throwing their pills into the market. This way out of patent producers can “artificially” preserve the existing monopoly price while extending their monopoly in an indirect way. For an end consumer, it keeps the price on medication as high as it has been when the company still had the patent.

To give an example of the above practices from another branch of men’s health producers: American manufacturer Solvay which has in its can testosterone gel AndroGel ventured to provide a stunning USD 42m sum per year to bar producing the copy of a gel in a generic form. The questionable practice still exists today and no doubt would affect any pill that can be doubled by generics. While there are court cases associated with such practices, the lucrative profits for Big Pharma players are stimulating for them to use anything that goes to preserve their monopoly not being backed by the patent as of today.

According to the agency Apnews, marketing specialists at Pfizer estimate that around 20% of regular customers would still opt for branded Viagra medications, regardless of cheaper generic equivalents coming to the market. The pharmaceutical giant is also planning to launch sales of pills at reduced prices that generics carry to un-insured patients via Pfizer’s on-line portal while offering pills for a relatively low price of $20 in stores to patients with select insurance coverage.