Is Vytorin More Hype Than Cure?

Vytorin is the name by which Merck & Co., as well as Schering-Plough, jointly marketed their drug combination derived from Zocor and Zetia. The goal Vytorin was to attack bad cholesterol in the body by preventing absorption of cholesterol as well as production of this substance in the liver.

In the tried and true methodology of directly marketing drugs to the public, the advertising campaign designed to entice consumers to ask their doctors for the drug by name is nothing short of brilliant. I found the campaign quite clever in that it combined Seuss like rhymes to show that bad cholesterol is not only entering the body from the ingested meal but also from the genes passed down by Uncle Neal.

Side effects identified are muscle pains, fatigue, eczema, headaches, and depression. These are just the ones that I could understand when reading the insert. Like many other statins (including Lipitor), Vytorin does interact with grapefruit juice.

Why then was Time Magazine warning as early as January 15^th of this year that Vytorin appears to be a failure? The answer is simple: a study termed ENHANCE that yielded results which were two years in the making finally released these finding and the effects of the drug were not nearly as good as was expected. Sure, the bad cholesterol was reduced - as is the case with many a cholesterol lowering drug - but the arterial plaque buildup was not affected. This led those commenting on the findings to point out that at this point in time it is anyone's guess just exactly how Vytorin works.

Adding insult to injury is the fact that the study results had been in for a couple of years, but the process of interpretation was about as slow as could be expected from a company focused on a hard driven advertising campaign. News Inferno suggests that the advertising cost was akin to about $155 million a year for a drug that does not deliver as much as it promises.

The final nail in the coffin for Vytorin could be the SEAS study which reports that aortic valve disease is not in any way significantly affected by the drug. To make matters worse, cancer patients who also took Vytorin showed a heightened risk of what the study termed to be "heart events".

The Star-Ledger Business News desk reports that second quarter earnings by the companies will be announced at the end of business today. Will the bell toll on what now appears to be a somewhat Faustian bargain?

Source:
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1703827,00.html
http://www.newsinferno.com/archives/2406
http://www.nj.com/business/index.ssf/2008/07/vytorin.html