Merck has a large study underway of its Vytorin combination cholesterol treatment that should definitively prove whether use of Zetia prevents heart attacks and strokes.
The project was begun by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which studied and compiled data before handing off to ACC and AHA this year to translate findings into clinical practice guidelines and publish the reports. They plan to begin work updating the guidelines next year, since the experts did not consider clinical data or scientific evidence available later than 2011.
The panel looked at about 17 different removal of extra obesity diets before deciding not to recommend any specific ones. Those medicines were not considered for the guideline reports as they were not available by 2011. The new guidelines could help boost sales of two new prescription removal of extra fat drugs -Belviq from Arena Pharmaceuticals Inc and Vivus Inc’s Qsymia.
The four groups deemed most likely to benefit from higher intensity statin treatment were.
Those with a LDL level of 190 or higher; patients with type 2 diabetes between 40 ages and 75; those between 40 and 75 deemed to have a ’10 year’ risk of developing heart disease of 5 percent or higher based on new risk assessment formulas, Patients with known heart disease. If followed in practice, the cholesterol management guidelines, could lead to more extensive use of high potency statins, such as AstraZeneca’s Crestor and higher doses of Pfizer’s Lipitor, now available as generic atorvastatin. They could also lead to reduced use of lower dose generic statins and perhaps far less use of ‘nonstatin’ cholesterol medicines, such as Merck’s Zetia and AbbVie’s Tricor, which the report said lacked evidence of reducing heart attacks and death.
They stopped short of setting lower target levels for bad LDL cholesterol, and focused instead on identifying high risk patient groups likely to most benefit from more intensive treatment with cholesterol lowering statin drugs. Counseling should focus on patients with other conditions that heighten heart risk disease, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, or a waist circumference of more than 35 inches for women and 40 inches for men, the obesity management report said.
Under President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as Obamacare, most private insurance companies are expected to cover counseling and other obesity treatments.
The Food and Drug Administration last week proposed banning trans fat from processed foods. Generally, the healthy living clinical practice guidelines for lowering heart disease risk called for 40 moderate minutes to ‘vigorousintensity’ aerobic exercise three to four times a week, and a diet in which levels of saturated fat, trans fat and sodium are below what is currently consumed by the average American.
The guidelines still use Body Mass Index, a measure of weight in relation to height, to identify patients at high risk of developing heart disease. While influence insurance coverage, the guidelines issued by two leading medical organizations on Tuesday are likely to be followed by cardiologists and primary care physicians. With 14 sessions over six months seen as ideal, it strongly recommends ‘in person’ counseling as part of programs to help patients maintain fat removal. Then again, they still emphasize a healthy diet and exercise as keys to avoiding the No.
