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(See: "Lilly Buys Out Cialis Partner".)While most of Lilly's brand drug sales increased slightly from a year ago, its depression fighter Cymbalta was booming.

Sales in the first quarter were $441.8 million, up 89.4%, or $233.3 million, from a year ago.

The company began enjoying a boost in prescriptions midway last year after it re-launched the brand with a new direct-to-consumer advertising campaign.

(See: "Lilly Shares Discount Rebound For Zyprexa, Cymbalta".) On top of higher consumer awareness, the company has benefited from a growing preference by physicians.

Doctors have started to differentiate the drug from other anti-depressants because of its ability to treat pain.

(See: "Lilly's Cymbalta Could See Market Share Gains".)James Kelly, an analyst at Goldman Sachs, said the earnings announced Monday also helped dull criticism that the company couldn't grow sales.

"Management delivered on revenues, which has been a key criticism from the bears on the stock," he wrote in a client note.More On This Topic The Mystery Of Pfizer's Toxic Pill Companies: LLY -% String xsl=(String) application.getAttribute(com.forbes.cms.Constants.XSL_REP_KEY)+"/story_body_html_trans.xsl"; final TransformerFactory tFactory = TransformerFactory.newInstance(); final Transformer transformer = tFactory.newTransformer(new StreamSource(xsl)); final ByteArrayOutputStream bao = new Byt...

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