document: Drugmaker scales back sharp hike in price of pregnancy drug WASHINGTON -- The St. Louis drug company lambasted for increasing the price of a pregnancy drug from $ 20 to $ 1,500 a dose announced Friday that it 's cutting the price by more than half . The sharp reduction to $ 690 per dose came two days after the Food and Drug Administration publicly invited competition . The drug , a synthetic form of progesterone commonly called 17P and marketed under the trade name Makena , is recommended for women at high risk of delivering prematurely . The drug is administered via injection weekly for about 20 weeks . Friday 's announcement by K-V Pharmaceutical Co. of a 55 percent price reduction puts the list cost of a full course of treatment at $ 13,800 . That 's down from $ 30,000 under K-V 's old price but still a sharp jump from the $ 400 a woman could expect to spend if she had the drug made at a compounding pharmacy . Until this year , an FDA-approved version of 17P was not available . So the only alternative for women was to take a prescription for the drug to a compounding pharmacy that produced individual batches of it for $ 10 to $ 20 a dose . In February , the FDA granted K-V Pharmaceutical Co. exclusive rights to make Makena for seven years . K-V subsequently priced it at $ 1,500 a dose and sent letters warning compounding pharmacies of an FDA crackdown if they did not stop making their versions . The FDA reacted Wednesday , saying it was n't planning on blocking compounding pharmacies from making the drug , essentially encouraging patients to go that route . K-V defended its pricing as justified by development costs . But the FDA noted K-V relied on a study by the National Institutes of Health to demonstrate the drug 's effectiveness .
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