United States approves world's most expensive drug: EUR 1.9 million per treatment

Novartis has created a remedy to cure spinal muscular atrophy and charges 1.9 million euros for it. It's called Zolgensma and it's already FDA approved.

The Food and Drugs Administration (FDA), the equivalent in the United States of America to Portuguese Infarmed, has approved Zolgensma, an innovative medicine to treat spinal muscular atrophy, a rare genetic disease. The Business Insider, which released the news, further notes that this is the most expensive drug ever to be approved: it will have a price of 2,125 million dollars (1.9 million euros). According to executives at Novartis, who produces the drug, the value is fair and reasonable, given what it can give patients.

According to data from the American Foundation for Spinal Muscular Atrophy, the disease affects about 10,000 to 25,000 people in the United States. Initially, the Swiss company Novartis suggested that the drug be priced at five million dollars (US $ 4.5 million) because it is a treatment that only needs to be used once and can cure the disease, although not yet whether the effects are permanent.