The national drug price regulator National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) has revised prices of 887 medicines, including steroids, insulin, vitamins and painkillers such as aspirin. The impact of the NPPA's drug price revision will be felt mostly on insulin drugs and the prices of these drugs may come down significantly as the NPPA has brought some more diabetes drugs under its purview.

In a recent notification, the NPPA has announced that it has fixed/revised the prices in respect of 887 formulation packs. This revision will bring down prices of many popular brands from companies such as Wockhardt, Piramal Healthcare, Biocon, sanofi aventis and Novo Nordisk. The new prices have to be in place within 15 days.

The pricing authority has also fixed prices of several drugs, whose market prices were not approved by NPPA. The price of Piramal Healthcare's erythrotone, an antibiotic used for the treatment of bacterial infections, has now been fixed at Rs 18.14 for a strip of 10 tablets.

The prices of Wockhardt's insulin brand Glaritus and Biocon's insulin brand Basalog have been fixed at Rs 130.04 for a 3-ml cartridge, exclusive of excise duty or local taxes, the NPPA notification said. The NPPA has also reduced the price of sanofi's popular insulin brand Lantus. The price of a 3-ml cartridge of Lantus would now cost Rs 488.98 (exclusive of taxes), instead of Rs 543.12.

The NPPA has said that it has revised the prices of medicines based on bulk drugs such as pheniramine, metronidazole, sulphadoxine with combinations, prednisolone , rifampicin with combinations, aspirin, multivitamin, erythromycin, pseudoephedrine with combinations, tolnaftate, sulphadoxine with combinations, betamethasone with combinations, gentamycin with combinations, vitamin E with combinations, erythromycin with combinations, methylprednisolone with combinations, dexamethasone with combinations, metronidazole with combinations, multivitamin with combinations, Medrol (methyl prednisolone), daivobet (betamethasone, Lantus/Apidra (insulin), Levemir/Novorapid/Novomix (monocomponent insulin), Humalog (monocomponent insulin), Basalog (insulin glargine), Glaritus (insulin glargine), Aldactone/Spiromide (spironolactone), Erythrotone (erythromycin estolate), Erywok (erythromycin estolate), etc.