FDA approves blood pressure drug

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Swiss drugmaker Novartis said Thursday that Exforge, a combination drug for treating high blood pressure that includes one of its top-selling blockbusters, has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Exforge is a combination of two blood pressure blockbusters: Diovan from Novartis (down $0.38 to $55.14, Charts), which totaled $4.2 billion in 2006 sales, and Pfizer's Norvasc.

The FDA approval is welcome news for Pfizer (Charts, Fortune 500). Norvasc accounted for $4.9 billion in sales last year, but its patent expires this year. When a drug loses its patent and becomes a generic medication, sales plunge for the original drugmaker.

Including Norvasc in the new combination approved this week could help Pfizer protect sales for the drug.

The approval is also good news for Novartis, which has had trouble trying to get its diabetes drug Galvus approved by the FDA.

"This is a positive event for Novartis and creates perhaps the most effective once-daily antihypertensive agent available on the market," wrote Joe Tooley, analyst for A.G. Edwards, in a published note.

Tooley does not own stock in Novartis, but A.G. Edwards does.