France, Spain, Austria and Switzerland tend to introduce the new drugs quickly but U.K. and Eastern European countries are slower, researchers say.

Dr. Nils Wilking of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden gathered data on the sales of newer drugs per inhabitant of each country provided by pharmaceutical industry consultants IMS Health.

Overall, the researchers found substantial variation between countries, both in terms of speed and uptake of newer cancer drugs and the level of usage of the drugs.

“Of the major western European Union countries, the United Kingdom tends to come out both low and slow with a few exceptions,” Wilking said in the statement. “Overall, Austria, Switzerland and France bring the new drugs out more quickly.”

The cost of the newer drugs is probably the major barrier to access, Wilking said. “To some extent it could also relate to the introduction of more ‘targeted’ drugs that tend to be more complex to understand and, in some cases, have smaller studies to support their approval.”

“We need much better epidemiological data in order to evaluate the link between access to cancer drugs and outcome,” Wilking said.

The findings were presented at the 33rd Congress of the European Society for Medical Oncology in Stockholm.

source : UPI