A Cholesterol Revolution

D o c t o r s a r e r e t h i n k i n g h o w c h o l e s t e r o l a f f e c t s y o u r h e a r t .

BY KELLY GARRETT

healthy yoiK

HEART HEALTHS

eart doctors

arc a pretty

steady,

unflappable

bunch. So it

was not a

I — small thing

when there was an abnormally loud

buzz in the air during the annual

convention of the American College

of Cardiology earlier this year.

“I can’t remember so many new

developments of such practical and

immediate value for people with

cardiovascular conditions, or for

those at risk for getting them,”

says Dr. Michael Weber, him self a

co-author of one of the ground-

breaking presentations. “It’s going

to change the way we practice

medicine.”

One discovery was that the

popular cholesterol-lowering drug

Vytorin does nothing to prevent the

clogged arteries that can lead to

heart attacks. The curious part is that

Vytorin—a combination of the tried-

and-true statin Zocor and the new

post-statin drug Zetia—actually did

lower levels of harmful LDL choles-

terol in the study subjects more than

the statin alone could. But it did not

lower heart attack risk, which is the

point of it all.

It gets even odder. Literally hours

after Vytorin officially fell out of

favor, two different investigations

showed that a good old-fashioned

statin called Crestor had a remarkable

ability to lower bad LDL, to keep

arterial walls from thickening, and

to prevent heart attacks, stroke, and

sudden death. So.

.. one drug out

(Vytorin) and one drug in (Crestor).

A simple wash? Most cardiologists

think the news is much more

complex, and much more useful,

than simply that.

2 6 0 bhP IEMBER

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