Alzheimer's Reading Room: Vytorin Postgame: Worse Than Expected

clipped from blogs.wsj.com The discussion of that big Vytorin study at this weekend’s big cardiology meeting was harsher than expected. Industry observers had predicted that an open conversation by the experts could temper the negative image of the drug that emerged earlier this year after the study results were made public, but just the opposite occurred. The study was presented at the conference yesterday and published online in the New England Journal of Medicine. “You’ve just seen a negative trial that should change practice, especially the way we in this country have prescribed,” Harlan Krumholz of Yale told thousands of cardiologists at the meeting, the WSJ reports. The NEJM also published an editorial based on the study results, calling on doctors to prescribe Zetia (and, by extension, Vytorin), only in selected cases. Catherine Arnold of Credit Suisse called the discussion “surprisingly negative,”