Replies to post #39204 on Amarin Corp Plc (AMRN)

[rdhitchcock]

Rose...reminds me of an old Mitch Hedberg joke.

"My belt holds my pants up, but the belt loops hold my belt up. I don't really know what's happening down there. Who is the real hero?"

Looking at the chart in that article provided (if my math is correct), it appears that LDL-C was reduced by 23.8%, triglycerides reduced by 12.2%......but also, hs-CRP reduced by 13.2%. Tough call to make when three different variables change at the same time to make the conclusion that LDL-C reduction is "the real hero" (IMO).

In regards to reduction of LDL-C, I would like to bring up Dr. Eliot Brinton's statement at ADCOM that makes an interesting point in regards to the JELIS trial.....

"So I think the statin treatment was pretty reasonable. A very important point is that reduction in CVD was comparable with higher versus lower LDL. So if your LDL was high, you still have the same CVD event reduction. So granted, this is suboptimal in terms of statin treatment, but in those who we would have treated more aggressively, it still seems to work very nicely.

The Japanese patients eat a lot of fish. But the benefit was seen with an EPA over 150, and there was a 100-point rise with the 1.8 gram EPA. So I think anybody that doesn't eat fish is still likely to do nicely on 1.8 grams of EPA.

With regard to the lipid changes, I know that I'm a lipidologist; we're considering lipids. But realize that the benefit was seen despite very anemic lipid changes in this study. The reduction in CVD was proportional to the on-treatment EPA level."

[sts66]

Good points - but that chart only shows 1 yr results for drug groups - lowering of TGs may be way higher than it shows, drop of 16.7 in Simva vs. Simva + Zetia group. Wonder about hs-CRP too?

I'm surely no expert in lipidology, but I find it rather hard to believe that dropping LDL-C from an already extremely low number to a slightly lower one could give such results all by itself, believe there is something else going on not related to LDL-C.