I would like to roughly calculate the market size of new drugs for ulcerative colitis in Japan.
The number of patients with ulcerative colitis was about 77,000 in 2002 (Intractable Disease Information Center), and if the number increases by 5,000 each year, the number probably exceeds 100,000 today.
Assuming that there are 50,000 patients who have not been issued a beneficiary certificate (or have not applied for one), the current number of patients is 150,000.
I think that my condition before using “Indigo naturalis” was moderate, so I think that the average amount of medication I use is about 3 tablets of Pentasa 3 times a day and 1 tablet of other intestinal medicines 3 times a day.
In my case, the cost of treatment (including the cost of medicine) covered by health insurance during the last year is about 350,000 yen, and the cost of treatment, medicine, and health food, etc. that I personally bear is about 50,000 yen, so let’s say the total cost is 400,000 yen.
If we estimate a little lower (not to exaggerate…) and assume an average of 300,000 yen per person, 150,000 people x 300,000 yen = 45 billion yen.
Since the definition is vague, this does not immediately translate into the size of the new drug market (if anything, it should be called market effect), but the total cost for Japan as a whole is about this much….
That’s a huge amount of money.