New drug for cholesterol causes a stir

Associated Press

CHICAGO

An experimental drug boosted good cholesterol so high and dropped bad cholesterol so low in a study that doctors were stunned and voiced renewed hopes for an entirely new way of preventing heart attacks and strokes.

“We are the most excited we have been in decades,” said Dr. Christopher Cannon of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, who led the study of the novel drug for Merck & Co. “This could really be the next big thing.”

The drug, anacetrapib, will not be on the market anytime soon. It needs more testing to see if its dramatic effects on cholesterol will translate into fewer heart attacks, strokes and deaths. Merck announced a 30,000- patient study to answer that question, and it will take several years.

But the sheer magnitude of the new medicine’s effects so far excited lots of doctors at an American Heart Association conference in Chicago, where results were presented Wednesday.

“The data look spectacular, beyond what anybody would have expected,” said Dr. Robert Eckel, a University of Colorado cardiologist and past president of the heart association. “It’s like a rocket to Jupiter versus one to the moon. I can think of many of my patients who could use the drug right now.”

Merck’s Dr. Luciano Rossetti agreed.

“We are trying not to be too giddy. The potential benefit is enormous,” said Rossetti, senior vice president of global scientific strategy at the company, based in Whitehouse Station, N.J.

It was one of two studies that caused unusual optimism and buzz at the heart meeting. The other tested a new procedure to lower blood pressure in patients whose pills failed them.

The new method uses a tube through a blood vessel to zap nerves near the kidneys, which fuel high blood pressure. Its success offers hope for a possible permanent fix for people with very high blood pressure despite taking fistfuls of pills each day. Only about a third of the millions of people worldwide with high blood pressure are able to control it well with pills.