![\"Heart\"](\"http:\/\/s.wsj.net\/media\/heart_art_200_20071214093616.jpg\")
Statins’ global conquest continues. The class of cholesterol drugs already includes Pfizer’s megablockbuster Lipitor as well as simvastatin, the hugely popular generic that Merck sold under the brand name Zocor.<\/p>\nStatins’ global conquest continues. The class of cholesterol drugs already includes Pfizer’s megablockbuster Lipitor as well as simvastatin, the hugely popular generic that Merck sold under the brand name Zocor.<\/p>\n
Now, AstraZeneca’s statin Crestor has crossed a new threshold: It’s the cholesterol drug for people who don’t have high cholesterol.<\/p>\n
The FDA just expanded the drug’s approval<\/a> to include reducing the risk of heart attack and stroke in people who meet all of the following criteria:<\/p>\n The approval is based on a big study called Jupiter<\/a>, which found that the drug reduced the risk of serious heart problems in patients with normal cholesterol but high levels of something called C-reactive protein<\/a>.<\/p>\n CRP is a marker of inflammation. As we’ve noted before<\/a>, it hasn’t joined measures such as blood pressure and cholesterol as a reliable measure of cardiovascular risk. <\/p>\n So whether Crestor’s new indication leads to broader use of the drug will depend in part on how often doctors measure their patients’ CRP levels, and how often they act on what they find.<\/p>\n Photo by CarbonNYC<\/a> via Flickr<\/p>\n Statins’ global conquest continues. The class of cholesterol drugs already includes Pfizer’s megablockbuster Lipitor as well as simvastatin, the hugely popular generic that Merck sold under the brand name Zocor. Now, AstraZeneca’s statin Crestor has crossed a new threshold: It’s the cholesterol drug for people who don’t have high cholesterol. The FDA just expanded the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":650,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-297715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/650"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297715\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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