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More setbacks for strategy of raising good cholesterol
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published March 27, 2007
NEW ORLEANS - The hot new strategy of trying to prevent heart disease by raising good cholesterol had more setbacks Monday as new studies showed that experimental drugs didn't work and also had safety problems. The news follows Pfizer Inc.'s abandonment in December of an $800-million investment in torcetrapib, the leading contender in this class of drugs, because it raised the risk of heart attacks and deaths. Heart specialists have been anxious to know whether the problems extend to all such drugs and doom this approach. "A lot of people think it's the next big thing, and we'll need to understand what went wrong with torcetrapib to move forward," said Dr. Steven Nissen, a Cleveland Clinic heart specialist who is president of the American College of Cardiology. The new studies, reported at the group's conference, gave a mixed answer. The Pfizer drug seems uniquely risky, but other drugs have problems, too. And even though they and the Pfizer drug raised HDL good cholesterol as intended, that made no difference in the odds of heart attacks or deaths, or key measures of cholesterol buildup in arteries. Doctors long have focused on lowering LDL, or bad cholesterol, to cut heart attack risk. Statins, sold as Lipitor and Zocor and also in generic form, lower LDL, which ferries fats from food into the bloodstream. But many statin users suffer heart attacks anyway, so doctors have been trying to boost HDL, or good cholesterol, which transports fat from the blood to the liver to be disposed of.
[Last modified March 27, 2007, 01:26:37]
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