It's another scientific failure for big pharma, and perhaps also a sign that the Food and Drug Administration is holding new heart pills to a tougher standard.
Merck's strength in cardiovascular ailments, for example, has allowed it to train a salesforce expert in this area, and to strike package deals for various heart pills with managed-care organisations and state-owned health services.
If a fistful of pills prevents heart attacks and deaths as well as a stent, it may mean that fewer angioplasty procedures are done as doctors back off and insurance companies ask tougher questions.
Originally designed to be safe for the stomach, both of these pills have been linked to heart problems, and Vioxx was pulled from the market.
Huge numbers of patients around the world take fish oil pills in hopes of preventing common heart rhythm problems.
FORBES: From Fish Oil to Snake Oil: Glaxo Fish Oil Pill Bombs In Heart Rhythm Study
By contrast, someone with a heart problem may be unsure whether to pop pills, operate, change his diet or do nothing.
ECONOMIST: Companies try to make health-care costs transparent
In the end, she lived as a recluse in her Paris apartment, increasingly dependent on the sleeping pills that may have caused the heart failure that ended her life 30 years ago Sunday.
But even as large studies--the kind Nissen conducts--have shown that some medicines can reverse the buildup of plaque in the arteries or reduce the risk of a heart attack, other doctors steadfastly insist that getting the heart pumping is just as important as popping pills.
Previously, doctors had believed the estrogen pills might actually protect against cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer's.
This may be because some people were erroneously put on the drugs, or because years of drug therapy healed heart damage, or simply because taking people off the pills motivates them to clean up their behavior.
Under previously existing guidelines, 36 million people should be taking cholesterol-lowering pills such as Lipitor, Zocor, or Pravachol to prevent heart attacks.
In practice, fish oil pills are used fairly frequently in patients who have had a heart attack to try and prevent future problems.
FORBES: November's Best- and Worst-Performing Biotech Stocks
Plaintiffs will have to pass through three gates, first providing evidence of a heart attack or ischemic stroke, proof they received at least 30 Vioxx pills, and evidence they took at least one of the pills within 14 days of injury.
Existing cholesterol-lowering pills like Lipitor and AstraZeneca's Crestor reduce the risk of heart attack by at least a third.
The article presents a study that compares different ways of using water pills, or diuretics, for the treatment of patients hospitalized with heart failure.
For one thing, it will take years to establish that the shot is as safe as the pills that are routinely popped by people who are at risk for heart attacks.
In the past three months the FDA has slapped cautionary labels on sleeping pills and yanked Novartis' constipation drug Zelnorm after that company's analysis showed heart problems.
In the future, further lowering the risk of heart disease is likely to come not from more powerful cholesterol drugs, but from adding new pills on top of them.
First, unlike the daily 80 mg aspirin regime recommended for those at risk of developing heart disease, patients in this study took 600 mg a day (in two 300 mg pills).
FORBES: Study: Daily Aspirin Cuts Hereditary Cancer Risk in Half
应用推荐