zetia
November 16, 2009 – 3:19 pm | by wisnuajiZetia Fails to Show Benefit Over Niacin for Heart Patients
Results reported here Sunday may not put the nail in the coffin for a once wildly popular cholesterol-lowering drug, but they do put Zetia at the bottom of the list of medications that doctors will be using.
So said Dr. Anthony DeMaria, a leading cardiologist who is also the editor in chief of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
He was referring to the results of a study that compared niacin — a form of vitamin B — to Zetia in high-risk patients who need more than a drug like Lipitor or Crestor to control their cholesterol.
Zetia, known generically as ezetimibe, is highly effective at reducing LDL, the so-called bad cholesterol. But niacin boosts HDL, or good cholesterol.
In the study reported at the American Heart Association meeting here — and published online by the New England Journal of Medicine — good trumped bad.
Niacin had a beneficial effect on the plaque buildup in the walls of the arteries that supply blood to the brain, but despite the fact that Zetia reduced LDL by almost 20 percent in patients who already had LDL cholesterol levels of less than 100 mg/dL, patients taking the drug had a slight worsening of the plaque build-up.
Taken from:
http://a.abcnews.com
Random Posts
Tags: ezetimibe, simvastatin, vytorin, zetia, zetia drug, zetia more drug_warnings_recalls
11 Trackback(s)