More Treatment Options For People With Bipolar

Media Release

January 2007

More Treatment Options For People With Bipolar Disorder – PHARMAC

People with bipolar disorder will benefit from a PHARMAC decision to widen access to a medicine already used to treat epilepsy.

The Government drug funding agency PHARMAC has announced it will widen access to two brands of lamotrigine (Mogine and Arrow-Lamotrigine) from February 2007 to enable them to be used to treat bipolar disorder.

PHARMAC’s Medical Director Peter Moodie says bipolar disorder is a difficult condition to manage long term and providing access to lamotrigine will offer another useful option for patients.

Lamotrigine adds to a range of treatments already funded for bipolar disorder.

“Existing treatments are effective but it is always useful from a clinical perspective to have further options at your fingertips,” says Dr Moodie. “Providing access to lamotrigine for the treatment of bipolar disorder will give more choice for people who cannot take, or whose condition isn’t adequately controlled, on other drugs.”

The access widening comes as result of agreements with Douglas Pharmaceuticals (Mogine) and Arrow Pharmaceuticals (Arrow-Lamotrigine) for funding of generic lamotrigine. The currently listed product, Lamictal (GlaxoSmithKline), will continue to be funded for people with epilepsy as it always has, while generic lamotrigine will be funded both for epilepsy and bipolar disorder.

Dr Moodie says the medicines regulatory agency, Medsafe, considers the generic brands of lamotrigine to have the same clinical effectiveness as the branded form of the drug.

ENDS

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