Nearly two years ago James Stein, a cardiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, got an unusual call.
Researchers for Merck/Schering Plough Pharmaceuticals, who were conducting a clinical trial of the blockbuster cholesterol drug Vytorin, wanted him to look at ultrasound images of the carotid arteries of a few people in the trial, which had just finished enrolling patients. Stein, an expert on the use of carotid ultrasound to detect heart disease, looked at a few of the ultrasounds and didn’t hear much from Merck/Schering-Plough for nearly a year and a half.
In the two years after Stein was contacted, Vytorin, which had already received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, was heavily promoted in TV ads, and its sales skyrocketed, though the results of the trial had not been released, and, when they were finally released, in January, they showed that the drug did not limit the buildup of plaque in arteries.
The results presented in Chicago Sunday show that while the combined drug, Vytorin, reduced cholesterol about 17% more than just Zocor, there was no significant difference in the plaque thickness found in the carotid arteries of the 720 patients in the trial, who were about equally divided between Zocor and Vytorin. In other words, Vytorin did no more for artery health than Zocor alone.
