Vitals Spotlight - We Give the Doctor an Exam

Dr. Roger Blumenthal

Researchers studied two medications that control cholesterol and found that adding an old standby drug, niacin, was superior in reducing buildup in the carotid artery, then Zetia, a newer drug.

The controversial research on cholesterol drugs was published in The New England Journal of Medicine and has the potential to strongly affect which cholesterol drugs will be prescribed in the future.

“It will certainly strengthen the idea that, after you give a statin, as a second agent, you should give a niacin. That is the implication of the study,” said Dr. Roger S. Blumenthal, a professor of medicine at the John Hopkins School of Medicine.

According to Vitals, Dr. Blumenthal received his medical degree at Cornell University and did his specialty training at John Hopkins University.

The results of this relatively small study have become a hot topic among the medical community, reports the New York Times. Some cardiologists praise the study as an indication that the drug companies’ profit, with combined sales of 4.6 billion dollars, is excessive considering the lack of concrete evidence of its benefit on heart health.

It has also attracted the attention of a powerful Republican Senator, Charles E. Grassley, who has been scrutinizing the two recently merged drug companies, Merck and Schering-Plough. But keeping a close eye on the activities of drug companies and their pursuit for profit has become increasingly necessary.

(injuryboard.com)

According to another New York Times story, the industry has been raising its prices at the fastest rate in years despite their promise to support the healthcare reform bill by shaving 8 billion a year off the nation’s drug’s costs.

The study randomly assigned 208 patients, with heart disease or at risk of heart, a statin and either Zetia or Niaspan. Over the course of 14 months, the bad cholesterol of the patients on Zetia decreased by 19.2 percent, but the patient’s arterial wall thickness stayed the same. In the niacin group, good cholesterol increased by 18.4 percent and the carotid wall thickness decreased.

Dr. Peter S. Kim, President of Merck Laboratories contests the results, saying the research was limited because it did not compare the groups of patients taking a statin and a second drug to a placebo group.

Dr. James H. Stein, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Medical School, sees the study as being especially significant when combined with the results of 30 years of research on the use of niacin. It adds to the weight of evidence that this drug might be instrumental in helping treat patients with heart disease.