Businessweek symptoms and conditions

Do cholesterol lowering drugs do any good? Thats a good question considering the debilitating side effects everyone here is complaining about.
Advertisements in the USA claim "30% reduction" in heart attack and strokes, but does that mean that everyone that takes the drug reduces their individual risk by 30%. Not exactly. The advertisements boast what is called relative risk reduction. The absolute risk reduction is what counts and is less than 1% on most statins. So how did lipitor do on prevention of events? Here is the bottom line: If you are a middle aged male, 100 MEN will have to take lipitor for 3.3 years to prevent one MAN from a heart attack or stroke. WOW! You have to treat 100 guys for over 3 years in order for one guy to benefit.

I noticed that the FDA turned down approval for Merck's Cordaptive. That was the niacin cholesterol drug that came with it's own chemical to control the side effect of facial flushing.

I noticed that they were in clinical trials for montelukast's effect on preventing heart disease. So I guess that Merck is trying to capitalize on the "inflammation" angle that is mentioned below. Who shows up for these clinical trials?

http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00379808?term=%22montelukast%22+and+%22heart%22&rank=1

The surgeons can do liver and kidney transplants but there won't be enough organs to go around for all of us who get sold all of these drugs. But nobody does brain transplants. What are the people on montelukast long term going to do? And there will be many, many more of them if Merck gets approval for preventing heart disease.
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http://blog.pharmexec.com/2008/05/01/mercks-cordaptive-a-nasty-surprise/

"The Merck drug was a nice piece of innovation: Kim’s elves figured out what causes niacin’s worst side effect, facial flushing, and developed a spanking new chemical, laropiprant, to control it. But since the cholesterol market is not exactly under served by pharma, you could also surmise that FDA is getting bearish on innovation there (more about that later).’s John Carey, apparently the only reporter not to be surprised, offers a must-read analysis of the situation.
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/apr2008/db20080429_182260.htm

“Add it all up and the FDA’s decision shouldn’t be seen as coming out of the blue. Cordaptive offers no big improvement over niacin alone—while introducing a new, unknown risk. And even the benefits of niacin’s effect on cholesterol may not be that big.”

“The decision also comes at a time when the very idea of cholesterol-lowering is under increasing scientific attack. Yes, doctors know that the statin class of cholesterol-lowering drugs, like Lipitor, do prevent heart disease and heart attacks. But there’s growing evidence that a big chunk of the benefits of statins comes from reducing inflammation,” writes John Carey.