Pfizer has sent thousands of sales representatives to convince physicians that higher doses of the statin Lipitor are more effective in the prevention of heart disease than generic statins in an effort to maintain market share, the Boston Globe reports. Lipitor, which had $8.4 billion in U.S. sales in 2005, this year "faces stiff competition from less expensive generics, especially the version of Zocor sold by Teva Pharmaceuticals," the Globe reports. Peter Brandt, executive vice president of U.S. pharmaceuticals at Pfizer, recently told analysts that "part of our strategy is that we ought to be encouraging physicians to move their patients to the higher doses" of Lipitor, which cost about $3.33 per pill, compared with about $2.44 per pill for the lower doses. For the week that ended Aug. 18, prescriptions for higher doses of Lipitor increased by 12%, according to Bear Stearns analyst John Boris. He added that Lipitor sales likely will increase by 2% in the third quarter. As part of the effort to promote Lipitor, Pfizer sales representatives have cited the results of a study sponsored by the company that appeared last month in the New England Journal of Medicine. The study found that higher doses of Lipitor can reduce risk for stroke recurrence. In addition, in an editorial that accompanied the study, David Kent, an assistant professor of medicine at Tufts New England Medical Center who has received grant support from Pfizer, said that the results might help convince health insurers to cover statins for stroke prevention. However, John Abramson, a clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School, said, "Because this is a drug company-sponsored study, what we're seeing is just a tunnel vision of the effect of high-dose Lipitor on stroke" (Henderson, Boston Globe, 9/5).