Adding Zetia to Zocor, he said, might lower cholesterol levels without reducing heart attacks and strokes.
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Zetia can be added to a low dose of a statin to lower cholesterol even more.
It's really now clear that statins do a lot more than just lower cholesterol.
According to Pharmanex, the rice has several natural properties that help lower cholesterol, including chemicals statins.
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This would provide relatively easy access to a product that has been shown to lower cholesterol.
The number of prescriptions for the drug, used to lower cholesterol, have fallen 38% since 2006.
When doctors want to lower cholesterol with a drug, they prescribe Pfizer's Lipitor about half the time.
The idea behind Vytorin is that combining Zocor and Zetia could lower cholesterol more than any single drug.
He said that the research represents a "proof of concept" for the idea that lower cholesterol is better.
Patients in the exercise group reported lower cholesterol levels and less back pain than those in the control group.
The idea was that it would lower cholesterol enough to prevent heart attacks in otherwise healthy people without doing harm.
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That drug combines Zocor with another medicine, Zetia, to lower cholesterol substantially--potentially without the muscle-harming side effects of the statins.
One big question that remains is whether doctors will extrapolate the results to other drugs that can massively lower cholesterol.
Paul Thompson, director of cardiology at Hartford Hospital, says he will still use Zetia when statins aren't enough to lower cholesterol.
Scientists found that compared with both their normal diet and a low fat diet those who ate the walnuts had much lower cholesterol levels.
But the FDA may still want to see big studies to prove the benefit, not just proof that they lower cholesterol.
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They can lower cholesterol by up to 10%, human trials have found.
Eye drops designed to lower cholesterol may be able to prevent one of the most common forms of blindness, according to US researchers.
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The world's biggest drugmaker, Pfizer (nyse: PFE - news - people ), sells Lipitor, a drug that helps to lower cholesterol.
New cardiology guidelines are expected to be unveiled this year, advocating that the drugs be used to lower cholesterol more than they already are.
Whole grains such as oatmeal and barley are also top choices because of their ability to help lower cholesterol as part of an overall heart-healthy diet.
But because its mechanism of action is so different from the statins, Zetia could be used as combination therapy, reducing the statin dosage necessary to lower cholesterol.
Scientists are reporting a new way to lower cholesterol, and it's particularly exciting because the new approach uses a novel molecular tool that could transform standard therapies.
And Pfizer also has to fight with Crestor from AstraZeneca and Vytorin from Merck and Schering-Plough, both of which can lower cholesterol a little bit more than Lipitor.
The optimistic case for Zetia is that adding it to a low dose of a statin will lower cholesterol as much as a high dose of the statin, but without the muscle-weakening side effects.
Various health studies have shown that eating a handful of almonds every day -- a food high in magnesium, Vitamin E and B2 -- can lower cholesterol and help reduce the risk of heart disease.
Atherosclerosis, the disease that leads to heart attacks and strokes, causes arteries to thicken, so the patients on Vytorin should have had skinnier artery walls than those on Zocor alone because of their lower cholesterol levels.
The types of medications that are particularly concerning include a class of medications called statins that help to lower cholesterol (simvastatin, atorvastatin, lovastatin), as well as some medications to treat heart ailments, cancer, and certain antibiotics.
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Employers--and the Medicare system, which is gearing up to cover 35 million elderly people in 2006--will have to decide whether to pay a big premium to lower cholesterol by a few extra points, or just push most people toward cheap generics.
Last night, the Food and Drug Administration announced the approval of Kynamro, a new drug to lower cholesterol in patients with homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia (HoFH), a rare genetic disease that causes sky-high cholesterol levels and heart attacks at a young age.
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