This will only stand to increase the desire for information in the areas of personalized medicine...genetics hopefully will soon offer more information to hopefully avoid this type of situation in the future....one drug is having one devastating effect...BD
Shares of Schering-Plough have dropped 26% this week, and Merck's stock is down 15%. The reason is a recommendation from a four-doctor expert panel at the American College of Cardiology that said physicians should sharply reduce the use of Zetia and Vytorin, the $5 billion cholesterol franchise shared by the two companies.
The panel recommendation came after the presentation of a small but extremely controversial study called ENHANCE, in which Vytorin did no better than generic Zocor at clearing the arteries of patients with an inherited disease that causes high cholesterol.
We need to understand the effect of new drugs on people. And that relying on a drug's effect on a set of lab tests may not tell the whole story. We have learned this lesson before. It appears that we need to learn it again.
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