Medical teams clear controversial cholestrol drug

Epidemiologists have cleared a class of cholesterol-lowering drug that had been implicated in a cancer scare.

The research led by a team from Oxford University in England has been published online by the New England Journal of Medicine.

The trial that raised the scare has also been presented at the European Society ...

Preliminary results from a Simvastatin and Ezetimibe combination study triggered the cancer scare in July.

The initial trial was designed to investigate whether a combination of these two cholesterol-lowering drugs would help in cases of aortic stenosis, where a key heart valve is partially blocked.

Simvastatin, a statin that has already been used in other drugs, works by blocking cholesterol synthesis in the body.

The newer ezetimibe works by blocking the absorption of cholesterol from the gut.

An unusual pre-publication announcement from the SEAS study reported that, while the therapy did not help very much in aortic stenosis, cancer appeared more frequently in the treated groups.

In the original research of 1,873 people in seven European countries with mild or moderate aortic stenosis, all the participants were treated with either a combination of both drugs or a placebo, and followed for at least four years.

The progress of stenosis appeared unaffected by the choice of treatment, although fewer of those treated needed bypass surgery for acute ischaemic heart disease over this period.

However, 105 people from the treated groups developed a cancer within the four years, whereas only 70 in the placebo group did.

There were also more cancer deaths in the treatment group.

But the apparent association turned out to be a statistical blip, as the sample size in the study was far too small to detect modest increases in risk with any certainty.

The companies Merck and Schering-Plough market the drug combination under the names Vytorin and Inegy.