Diseases Big Pharma Hopes You Get in 2012

Of course not all dis­eases are Wall Street pleasers. To be a true block­buster dis­ease, a con­di­tion must 1) really exist but have huge diag­nos­tic “wig­gle room” and no clear-cut test 2) be poten­tially seri­ous with “silent symp­toms” said to “only get worse” if untreated 3) be “under-recognized,” “under-reported” with “bar­ri­ers” to treat­ment 4) explain hith­erto vague health prob­lems a patient has had 5) have a catchy name—ED, ADHD, RLS, Low T or IBS—and instant med­ical iden­tity 6) need an expen­sive new drug that has no generic equivalent.

Here are some poten­tial block­buster dis­eases Pharma hopes you get in 2012.

Adult ADHD

Everyday prob­lems labeled as “depres­sion” sailed Pharma through the last two decades. You weren’t sad, mad, scared, con­fused, remorse­ful, griev­ing or even exploited, you were depressed—and there was a pill for that. But depres­sion peaked just like the Atkins diet and the Macarena. Luckily there is adult ADHD, which has dou­bled in women 45 to 65 and tripled in men and women 20 to 44, accord­ing to the Wall Street Journal.

Like depres­sion, adult ADHD is a catch-all cat­e­gory. “Is It ADHD or Menopause?” asks an arti­cle in Additude, a mag­a­zine devoted exclu­sively to ADHD. “ADD and Alzheimer’s: Are These Diseases Related?” asks another arti­cle in the same magazine.

“I’m Depressed. Could it be ADHD?” says an ad in Psychiatric News, show­ing a pretty but pout­ing young woman. “Adults with ADHD were nearly 2x more likely to have been divorced,” says another ad, called “Broken Promises,” in the same pub­li­ca­tion, exhort­ing doc­tors to “screen for ADHD.”

Adults with ADHD are often, “less respon­si­ble, reli­able, resource­ful, goal-oriented and self-confident and they find it dif­fi­cult to define, set and pur­sue mean­ing­ful inter­nal goals,” says an arti­cle co-written by Harvard child psy­chi­a­trist Dr. Joseph Biederman, who is cred­ited with putting pedi­atric bipo­lar dis­or­der on the map. They “show ten­den­cies to being self-absorbed, intol­er­ant, crit­i­cal, unhelp­ful, and oppor­tunis­tic,” and “tend to be incon­sid­er­ate of other people’s rights or feel­ings,” says the arti­cle, describ­ing most people’s brother-in-laws.

Adults with ADHD will have trou­ble keep­ing a job and get worse with­out treat­ment says WebMD, tap­ping into the sec­ond require­ment of a block­buster disease—symptoms worsen with­out pills. “Adults with ADHD may have dif­fi­culty fol­low­ing direc­tions, remem­ber­ing infor­ma­tion, con­cen­trat­ing, orga­niz­ing tasks or com­plet­ing work within time lim­its,” says the site, whose orig­i­nal part­ner was Eli Lilly. “If these dif­fi­cul­ties are not man­aged appro­pri­ately, they can cause asso­ci­ated behav­ioral, emo­tional, social, voca­tional and aca­d­e­mic problems.”

How did Pharma get 5 mil­lion kids and now, maybe, their par­ents on ADHD meds? In Time Square, 26- by 20-foot screen ads in that ask “Can’t focus? Can’t sit still? Could you or your child have ADHD?” four times an hour don’t hurt. (Bet no one had trou­ble focus­ing on that!)

Still, con­vinc­ing adults they aren’t sleep defi­cient or bored but have ADHD is only half the bat­tle. Pharma also has to con­vince kids who grew diag­nosed as ADHD not to quit their meds, says Mike Cola of Shire (which makes the ADHD drugs Intuniv, Adderall XR, Vyvanse and the Daytrana patch). “We know that we lose a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of patients in the late teen years, early 20s as they kind of fall out of the sys­tem based on the fact that they no longer go to a pediatrician.”

A Shire ad in Northwestern University’s stu­dent paper this year takes the issue head on. “I remem­ber being the kid with ADHD. Truth is, I still have it,” says the head­line splashed across a photo of Adam Levine, the lead singer of Maroon 5. “It’s Your ADHD. Own It,” is the tagline. (Was “Stay Sick” the run­ner up?)

Of course, push­ing speed on col­lege kids (or any­one for that mat­ter) isn’t too hard. Why else do meth deal­ers say, “first taste free”? But Pharma is so eager to retain its pedi­atric ADHD mar­ket, it has funded for-credit courses for doc­tors like, “Identifying, Diagnosing, and Managing ADHD in College Students,” and “ADHD in College: Seeking and Receiving Care During the Transition From Child to Adult.”

To make sure no one thinks ADHD is a made-up dis­ease, WebMD show color-enhanced Pet scans of the brains of a nor­mal per­son and an ADHD suf­ferer (flanked by an ad for Vyvanse). But it is doubt­ful the scans are really dif­fer­ent, says psy­chi­a­trist Dr. Phillip Sinaikin, author of Psychiatryland. And even if they are, it proves nothing.

“The crux of the mat­ter, is that there is sim­ply no defin­i­tive under­stand­ing of how neu­ronal activ­ity is related to sub­jec­tive con­scious­ness, the age old unsolved body/mind rela­tion­ship,” Sinaikin told AlterNet. “We have not advanced beyond phrenol­ogy and this arti­cle in WebMD is sim­ply the worst kind of manip­u­la­tion by the drug indus­try to sell their over­priced prod­ucts, in this case a des­per­ate effort by Shire to main­tain a mar­ket share when Adderall goes generic.”

Rheumatoid Arthritis

Rheumatoid arthri­tis is a seri­ous and dan­ger­ous dis­ease. But so are Pharma’s immune-suppressing bio­logic drugs like Remicade, Enbrel and Humira, which are pushed to treat it. While RA attacks the body’s own tis­sues, lead­ing to inflam­ma­tion of the joints, sur­round­ing tis­sues and organs, immune sup­pres­sors can invite can­cers, lethal infec­tions and acti­vate TB.

Click here to read the rest of this arti­cle at HuffingtonPost.com.