More Bad News for Zetia

[Anonymous]

Agree juries are comprised of dummies. If you are correct (i.e., Merck will have to settle out of court for big money...and Zetia sales will plummet), then the next round of layoffs in sales may be sooner than we thought. Before November would be ideal for legacy SP. Strange that Merck has issued no statement on this latest controversy.

It will take years, they will give out the money and take no responsibility. They will not say anything because at this point it's not in their best interest to speak. Everything is being done behind closed doors.

Jeffrey

 

[Anonymous]

The data is so muddy that there can be no strong case for pulling zetia/vytorin for safety reasons, let alone for supporting a groundswell of suits for damages. Even the FDA cannot and will not discern these phenomena. The real issue for those that regulate and approve compounds is that Merck/S-P have basically made somewhere around 35 billion in revenues since ezetimibe's approval in 2002. Regulators will be (and are right now) far more demanding in seeing data actually supporting positive life outcomes for such products. Clinical trials will be far more expensive and prolonged and with increased risk that companies will fail to demonstrate real enhancements relative to the standard of care (statins). The good news for the pharmaceutical industry is that heavy promotion is all you need to convince the medical public to take medicine that basically doesn't work any better than a cheap generic. People will always have money to burn when it comes to their health - especially when it is someone else's money.

 

[East Coast Doctor]

Using plaque thickness and changes as measures of a drug's efficacy is worthless, at least according to the JACC article published last summer. Their metanalysis showed that lowering LDL to goal was effective in reducing events irrespective of whether plaque regressed, remained the same or even progressed!
Plaque thickness is a great baseline risk assessment, but is apparently of no value as an assessment of medical therapy.