Talk:List of largest selling pharmaceutical products

Numbers clearly wrong
The citations in this article are from 2013, but the data in the actual table have been updated to 2014-2015 without reference. The numbers listed in the sales portion seem to match up similarly with the overall SALES numbers presented in other sources, however number of product sold does not equal total sales in dollars. A significant number of sources site drugs like Enbrel at over $8 billion in sales, which is completely contrary to what is represented in this chart. While the format is extremely helpful, the sales data in dollars, as noted by other editors below, appears to be completely wrong. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.9.220.165 (talk) 18:35, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Numbers are total nonsense
The article lists Q1 2014 sales of Levothyroxine as 20 billion dollars. This is ridiculous for any drug, and according to the source the correct number would be 200 million for the Q4 2013 (no 2014 sales are listed.) And it comes in at #84, not at number one.

Pretty much everything going down the list strikes me as implausible. I assume some error on an update especially after reading sinebot's note but as it stands numbers are implausible fantasies to anyone passingly familiar with the industry.

[Edit: The cause of the mistake seems to be someone used this source: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/844317 and confused prescriptions with sales in dollars (and multiplied by 1000 to boot). There are, as noted, other problems too. -- M]

Mark 9/30/2015 108.233.44.72 (talk) 04:43, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

[Edit: Yes - these data seem to be taken from number of prescriptions and are not based on sales. It is widely known and accepted that Humira is the number one selling drug. The WebMD source is also wrong for this and may have taken only US sales into account. http://www.fiercepharma.com/special-reports/15-best-selling-drugs-2012 http://www.fiercepharma.com/special-reports/10-best-selling-drugs-2013 http://www.firstwordpharma.com/node/1263906#axzz3s4lm1Qtg This reference should be taken down. It is very misleading] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 100.2.165.74 (talk) 23:09, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Corrupted data after 17 August 2015 edits
The data in this table appears to have been seriously corrupted by edits done on 17 August 2015. If you look at entries 75 to 98, they are all listed as Tenofovir/emtricitabine with Gilead as the manufacturer. This is wrong. E.g. Alphagan P is an eye drop for glaucoma, Advair HFA is an asthma drug and Humulin R is an insulin used for diabetes. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Djstates (talk • contribs) 03:59, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

Updated data
Updated data can be found at www.imshealth.com/deployedfiles/imshealth/Global/Content/StaticFile/Top_Line_Data/Global_Top_15_Products.pdf

24.60.190.107 (talk) 04:27, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

The latest data on this page is for 2014. Can someone please update? Till Bruckner (talk) 16:13, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

Value? Something shy of plagiarism?
As far as I can tell, this comes basically from reprinting one article from an external source. Although it is attributed, isn't that something shy of plagiarism but greater than proper encyclopedia use? There is no synthesis, summary or useful adaptation of the material, just copying it to this free source. I'm not sure that is appropriate Wiki behavior. NotTires (talk) 15:41, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Looks like pretty clear copyright violation. I think that might even fall under speedy deletion. --70.41.70.6 (talk) 00:09, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually, after looking at the two sources, both seem to be from the US government, and thus public domain. NotTires's original complaint about there being no useful adaptation, however, still stands. --70.41.70.6 (talk) 00:20, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

If attribution / citation sound, please update and correct but do not remove. (Prof D)
This is a very important body of information, is prima facie encyclopedic, and tremendously useful. If it is sourced in the public domain, and if direct linking to a suitable regularly updated government webpage is not more effective. **then I believe this page should certainly stay.**

That said, expert editorial review is in order:

No. 41, generic name, "insulin analog", is not correct. (It should be "insulin glargine", see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lantus .) No. 46 is a vaccine and not a drug, etc. Certainly more such corrections needed; I did not skim completely or thoroughly. Prof DMeduban (talk) 15:38, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

And in general, would encourage care in raising plagiarism / copyright issues in Sections Titles ...
Add citation, discuss possibility in section, but avoid such bold declarations. Research first, declare only after due diligence is done. My opinion. Prof D Meduban (talk) 15:44, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Top 200 US Products of 2011
I've spent hours working on the list below and adding all the redirects, and even catagories. This table should be the most up-to date full year data until July 2013 when 2012 year data comes out: WikiProject Pharmacology/Top 200 US Prescriptions 2011 - 16:05, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Removal request by Drugs.com
Hello. The Wikimedia Foundation has received a request from Drugs.com for the removal of some of the content in this article. The WMF does not believe there is a legal reason under U.S. law to remove the complained-of content and thus believes it is a decision that rests with the community, as all content issues do. The WMF has informed them of this and indicated that they would put the decision to you. We will simply communicate the community decision to the company after the community has come to a consensus for or against removal.

As Drugs.com have spent time and money developing the figures being used in this article, they ask that the community remove the rank, sales figures, and change columns from this table, as a courtesy.

Please help resolve this question so that we can communicate the community decision to the correspondent. Thank you. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:03, 5 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Interesting timing, as something similar just came up over at this AfD, where a business is apparently asserting copyright claim over music charting data. Tarc (talk) 19:35, 5 April 2013 (UTC)


 * At the bottom of the source chart it says, "Copyright - All rights reserved. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission is strictly prohibited." I don't understand why this isn't a clear expression of the company's legal rights in the matter. Please could somebody provide clarification? Praemonitus (talk) 22:37, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
 * See Copyright in lists. Briefly, that particular arrangement and presentation may be &copy; Drugs.com, but the historical, numeric data presented therein (and provided by IMS Health) would be in the public domain. The ranking could be construed as problematic, but if the Foundation "does not believe there is a legal reason under U.S. law" to remove the content, I'm sure they've looked into that. (Standard disclaimer, IANAL, that's merely a personal interpretation of copyright law etc. etc.) Fvasconcellos (t·c) 01:35, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the clarification. Since the ranking is based upon numerical data rather than opinion, I suppose that's not a reason to object. A concern might be that the web site may move the data behind a pay wall as a result of publication here. But I'd think that would be unlikely. Praemonitus (talk) 17:02, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Exactly. Either way, this may soon be a moot point—this year's IMS Health Use of Medicines in the United States report is forthcoming (it usually comes out in April), and we can then update this article using data obtained directly from the source. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 17:25, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
 * ♠My first reaction was, "Sod off". ;p
 * ♠My second is, if the data is publicly available, no website has a right to claim it. This is up there with MBL claiming their game stats are proprietary...  TREKphiler   any time you're ready, Uhura  02:15, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

I have shown drugs.com to not correlate with other sites and thus I do not believe drugs.com to be reliable. See http://mitphd.com/check%20big%20data%20blog.nsf/dx/internet-drug-ratings-askapatient.com-webmd-correlate-well-but-drugs.com-does-not — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.187.2.42 (talk) 14:09, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

Time series info?
I'm not sure how to do this organizationally, but it seems like there is a lot of valuable information in the historic data that is being lost by the updating of this page. We are keeping the thing current. This is very valuable if I want to know what is most money now, but there are real times when I may want to know what was most money in 2010, etc. (By analogy, I might want to know who hit most home runs in 2010 even if that player is not a factor nowadays.)TCO (talk) 14:03, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Unclear
What does $000 mean in the sales section? Thousands? Should be made clear. Le Grand Bleu (talk) 05:20, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

US Centric Flagging of this Article
There does not appear to be any entry in the Talk page on the US Centric flag at the top of the article. I'd like to note here that while ranking by worldwide sales would be better in everyone's mind, that data is much less readily available, and I think having the U.S. data is more useful than having no data at all. For most drugs, U.S. sales are about half of worldwide sales, so the numbers at least give a semi-quantitative view of what the WW sales are likely to be.

Since there is no comment section for discussion of the flag here on the talk page, I've removed it. Happy to discuss. Formerly 98 (talk) 19:40, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

That this is US sales really needs to be made clear. I spent a long time wondering why the order and magnitude of drugs and sales were so at odds with e.g. http://www.genengnews.com/insight-and-intelligence/top-20-best-selling-drugs-of-2012/77899775/?page=1 before coming here and finding this entry. I will not change the title but it really should be changed to List of largest selling pharmaceutical products in the USA or otherwise the list edited to reflect the worldwide situation such as in the link above.

[EDIT - These data are based on NUMBER OF PRESCRIPTIONS and can be found on this source: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/829246 where there are two tables 1. Number of prescriptions 2. sales (US only). The wiki article used the number of prescriptions data, but labelled the table as sales in dollars. Worldwide sales data is available through various sources. http://www.pmlive.com/top_pharma_list/Top_50_pharmaceutical_products_by_global_sales] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 100.2.165.74 (talk) 23:21, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Failure
At rank 74 (Zytiga), the drug name and others are inproper, beacuse it is abiraterone acetate for prostate cancer. Other ranks could be also inappropriate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.228.143.98 (talk) 17:43, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Inaccurate data?
There is something wrong with the data in the article. First of all, the reported time frame for the data is contradictory. At the top of the article, it says the data is for "sales in U.S. dollars for April 2014 through March 2015", in the table the header for sales data says "Sales Q1 2014", and the reference the data says it is for "Q4 2013". Furthermore, the data in the table doesn't match what is presented at the link which is claimed to be the source ("http://www.drugs.com/stats/top100/sales"). Also, Synthroid can't possibly be the #1 top selling drug. I'd be surprised if it is currently in the top 50. -- Ed (Edgar181) 13:23, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
 * For now, I have reverted to an older version of the article. Incorrect data appears to have been added in Aug 2015.  -- Ed (Edgar181) 11:34, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Deletion?
I recommend this article is deleted. It's inaccurate and hasn't been updated for years. 81.104.142.198 (talk) 04:04, 8 August 2018 (UTC)


 * These (not always accurate) data are seven to ten years old. This could be a worthwhile article, though difficult to rewrite accurately without access to proprietary databases such as IMS/IQVIA. 100.15.97.65 (talk) 11:32, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Numbers are not correct, neither is the content of the table.
Either I'm overlooking something or the table is just plain wrong. In the actual source, spot 5 is EG-1962 which seems to have been discontinued, but this should still be stated in the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by WikipediaDorian (talk • contribs) 08:22, 26 March 2020 (UTC) These (not always accurate) data are seven to ten years old. This could be a worthwhile article, though difficult to rewrite accurately without access to proprietary databases such as IMS/IQVIA.

Large number of wrong dates in "Best selling pharmaceuticals of 2013" section
A large number of the dates are wrong in the "Best selling pharmaceuticals of 2013" section. An especially large number of drugs are oddly listed as being approved in 1909, but there are other dates wrong as well (I just corrected Vyvanse from 1990 to 2008). I think either someone needs to correct the dates or the column should be deleted for this section. Wikipedialuva (talk) 01:53, 9 February 2022 (UTC)