S. 422, a bill introduced by Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan earlier this month, has a companion in the House, Lois Capps‘ H.R. 1032. It takes the short title of the “HEART for Women Act of 2009,” with HEART being an acronym for “Heart Disease Education, Analysis Research...

Twice as much potassium as sodium cuts heart risk Getting twice as much potassium as you do sodium could cut your risk of death from cardiovascular disease in half. That’s the conclusion of a study from Loyola University Health System in Chicago, which looked at people who weren’t asked to chang...

Should millions more people be taking Crestor? That’s a real balancing act. You have a decrease in heart attacks, but from a fairly small incidence rate. So at a minimum, you’ll need to balance the costs of those coronary events versus the cost of paying for all that Crestor. And statins are not...

AstraZeneca took a pretty big risk in running a trial as big as the JUPITER one, but it seems to have paid off for them. As everyone has been reading, it appears that their Crestor (rosuvastatin), lowers the risk of cardiovascular events in patients with elevated C-reactive protein, even those with ...

This week was supposed to reveal the FDA's decision on Dai-Ichii Sankyo and Eli Lilly's anticlotting drug prasugrel. That one's in the same chemical class as Plavix (clopidogrel), and works by the same mechanism. Since Plavix did about eight billion dollars of business last year, and the anticlottin...

Schering-Plough has had its share of troubles over the years, but the company has also seen itself saved by some pretty unlikely compounds. Vytorin (ezetimibe) is the example I’ve spoken about here, and if the drug doesn’t seem like a savior at the moment, well, you have to keep in mind that it ...

So why is Merck's stock dropping - again? The FDA just unexpectedly handed them a "not approvable" letter for their latest drug, Cordaptive. Actually, we should stop calling it that, since they also told the company that they're not going to approve that name, either. What Merck's going to do with a...

The golfer's checklist to ensure a healthy back: » Visit a physical therapist or chiropractor well versed with golfers for a golf-specific physical assessment and conditioning program. » Take a lesson from a PGA professional about basic fundamentals and how the body should move during the golf swi...

This is turning into Cardiovascular Week around the blog, I have to say, and not in a good way. The latest news is the failure of a drug candidate from Takeda, TAK-475 (lapaquistat). They were in the lead in the field of squalene synthase inhibitors for cholesterol lowering (many other companies hav...

Ezetimibe, known as Zetia and as the key component of Vytorin, was invented by friends and colleagues of mine. It was the first drug I ever saw discovered after I joined the drug industry. The initial discovery of the whole compound class happened around the corner from my lab, and the compound that...