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U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., is calling for an investigation into what she calls price gouging and potentially anti-competitive behavior after KV Pharmaceutical raised the price 150-fold for an injection used to prevent preemie babies.

Klobuchar and Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, sent a letter Thursday to Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz urging the agency to launch a prob into Makena, is a weekly injection of progesterone meant to prevent pre-term labor in pregnant women and has been safely administered by U.S. pharmacies in the past at a cost of between $10 and $20 per injection. After Bridgeton-based KV was granted orphan status for its version of the drug, the cost rose to $1,500 per injection – 150 times the original cost.

“This is a proven and affordable drug that has been around for over 50 years. It’s critical that we make sure this company isn’t taking advantage of its orphan-drug determination to monopolize the market and engage in price gouging at the expense of pregnant women,” Klobuchar said. “At a time when rising prices for prescription drugs are stretching the budgets of middle-class families, we must be vigilant in stopping practices that would limit access to vital medicines.”

“KV created an overnight monopoly for this lifesaving drug – and then proposed raising the price by 14,900 percent,” Brown said. “Last week, I called on KV Pharmaceutical to immediately reconsider their decision, but to this date the company continues to defend this astronomical price increase. Price-gouging is never acceptable, particularly not when it undermines public health and fleeces taxpayers. Families deserve an investigation.”

Last week, Brown sent a letter to KV asking the company to reverse course on the price increase for Makena. Brown called on the company to maintain access to the critical drug to stem an increase in premature births.

The drug first came to the market over 50 years ago and it has recently been used to help prevent early births in women who have a history of spontaneous pre-term deliveries.

The full text of the letter is below: