Dr Bosetti said there was some evidence suggesting cholesterol-lowering statin drugs may help protect against prostate cancer.
First, it provides definitive proof Crestor has lifesaving benefits like other statin drugs, such as Lipitor, Zocor and Pravachol.
The AIM-HIGH trial had enrolled high-risk individuals and all were prescribed statin drugs.
Hazlett notes another promising drug: an anti-cholesterol treatment called ezetimibe that makes any of the vaunted statin drugs more attractive.
But to do so, it is going to have to demonstrate superiority over the entire field of statin drugs, including Lipitor.
The decidedly bad results with non-statin drugs could make it much more difficult for any new cholesterol drugs to reach the market.
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These statin drugs do a great job cutting LDL, the bad cholesterol that cakes up in arteries and then breaks off, causing heart attacks.
Another explanation is that Baigent and his colleagues have been the fiercest proponents of the idea that statin drugs work solely by lowering cholesterol.
In specific instances technology to save babies born prematurely and statin drugs to reduce cholesterol, to take two the benefits of spending greatly outweigh the costs.
Vytorin competes with statin drugs like Lipitor from Pfizer and Crestor from AstraZeneca, which have been shown to prevent heart attacks and strokes.
It can be effectively controlled by the use of statin drugs.
The drug was unique in that it raises HDL, the "good" kind of cholesterol the currently popular statin drugs work only to lower bad cholesterol.
Zetia is approved for lowering cholesterol, but there is no evidence it prevents heart attacks and saves lives like the statin drugs, including Lipitor and Zocor.
Washington (CNN) -- An entire class of statin drugs will get new labels that alert the public to safety concerns, the Food and Drug Administration announced Tuesday.
They show, for instance, that statin drugs like Lipitor and Zocor can reduce the rate of heart attacks and death in people who have had previous heart attacks.
Ultimately, cardiologists hope to create a powerful new triple-threat cocktail combining today's statin drugs for lowering bad cholesterol (like Lipitor) with new compounds to boost good cholesterol and other drugs that would directly reduce vessel-wall inflammation.
Another source of tension between Merck and Schering: Merck soon hopes to launch a new medicine, Cordaptive, that will compete with Zetia as a treatment that can be added to statin drugs like Zocor and Pfizer 's Lipitor.
To keep perspective, the fact that other cholesterol-lowering statin drugs like Lipitor and Crestor are more potent probably factored into this decision if the top dose of Zocor were the only option, the FDA might have kept it.
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The researchers aim to recruit 150 women under the age of 70 with type 2 diabetes who have not had a period for at least a year, and who have been taking cholesterol-lowering statin drugs for at least 12 months.
Another source of tension between Merck and Schering: Merck soon hopes to launch a new medicine, Cordaptive, that will compete with Zetia as a treatment that can be added to statin drugs like Zocor and Pfizer 's (nyse: PFE - news - people ) Lipitor.
Its successes included the first statin cholesterol drugs Mevacor and Zocor, the first mumps vaccine and some of the first HIV drugs.
It was a member of the extraordinary statin class cholesterol drugs.
"It's not the first time something in large epidemiological datasets just didn't work out clinically, " Ferris says, noting that statin medications, anti-inflammatory drugs, and estrogen therapy have all failed to live up to their initial promise in preventing or treating Alzheimer's.
The class labeling is based on FDA evaluation of all statin labels, entry of new interacting drugs on the market, and a review of clinical data and post marketing reports.
But cardiologists still think many more people--perhaps all 60 million Americans over age 55--should be taking a statin, be it Lipitor or competing drugs such as Merck 's (nyse: MRK - news - people ) Zocor, or Pravachol from Bristol-Myers Squibb (nyse: BMY - news - people ).
But some have questioned whether lowering cholesterol with Zetia will prevent heart attacks, strokes and heart procedures as well as statins do, since Zetia works differently from the older drugs (see: "The Statin Showdown").
Several blockbuster drugs lost patent protection in 2006, such as the statin Zocor from Merck and the antidepressant Zoloft from Pfizer.
In fact, it is running what could be the definitive test of fish oil-based drugs: a study of whether adding Vascepa to a statin medicine in patients with high triglycerides reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease.
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