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Replies to #68059 on Biotech Values

iwfal

10/31/08 5:32 PM

#68068 RE: DewDiligence #68059

“It’s potentially a game-changer,” Steve Nissen, a high-profile cardiologist who is often skeptical of the drug industry, told Forbes. “There could be a much larger population of patients that may benefit than are currently treated.”

He forgot the counter part to this - that there is a very significant possibility that a large population of patients taking statins get little benefit. (Somewhat speculation on my part - based upon combining two factoids: a. the likelihood of much larger efficacy seen in Jupiter than in elevated ldl trials, and b. a large fraction of patients with elevated ldl in PROVE-IT etc have significantly elevated crp.)

I'd expect that someone crunches number on Jupiter to figure that out - but of course it will take a decade+ to get hard data from another trial. And whoever tries to run such a trial is going to have a darn hard time finding money - it won't come from big pharma, and it won't come from academia (since so much of academia has swallowed 'statins-work-via-ldl' as ABSOLUTE (in a recent Science article it was clear that there is complete disagreement in cardiology about anything other than ldl - and that most scientists talk their book).

microcapfun

11/11/08 8:33 PM

#68413 RE: DewDiligence #68059

>>The AstraZeneca financed study, known as Jupiter, enrolled more than 15,000 basically healthy people with modest amounts of bad cholesterol (the average LDL level was 104), but high levels of a common marker of inflammation [CRP].

Researchers aimed to see whether Crestor lowered the risk of major cardiovascular events such as heart attack and stroke; the study was stopped early in March because of “unequivocal” benefits for patients who received the drug, but the full results have yet to be released [#msg-28053790].
<<


Could it be that CRP had nothing to do with it - i.e. that Crestor's efficacy was due to simply lowering LDL to an even safer level? Many now advise reducing LDL to below 70. Only below about 70 does the amount of plaque actually decrease rather than increase more slowly.

At least that's what I read somewhere ...

micro