Testing A New Experimental Drug To Raise Good Cholesterol Level

Testing A New Experimental Drug To Raise Good Cholesterol Level.
An conjectural medication that raises HDL, or "good," cholesterol seems to have passed an opening hurdle by proving safe in preliminary trials. Although the trial was primarily designed to manner at safety, researchers scheduled to present the finding Wednesday at the American Heart Association's annual session in Chicago also report that anacetrapib raised HDL cholesterol by 138 percent and abstract LDL, HDL's evil twin, almost in half. "We saw very encouraging reductions in clinical events," said Dr Christopher Cannon, prima donna author of the study, which also appears in the Nov 18, 2010 outcome of the New England Journal of Medicine.

A big study to verify the results would take four to five years to complete so the drug is still years away from market, said Cannon, who is a cardiologist with Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. Other experts are intrigued by the findings, but note that the probe is still in very betimes stages. "There are a lot of people in the prevention/lipid field that are simultaneously excited and leery," said Dr Howard Weintraub, clinical commander of the Center for the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City.

Added Dr John C LaRosa, president of the State University of New York (SUNY) Downstate Medical Center in New York City: "It's very initial but it's respected because the finish drug out of the barrel of this class was not a success. This looks like a better drug, but it's not definitive by any means. Don't deliver this to the bank".

LaRosa was referring to torcetrapib, which, like anacetrapib, belongs to the class of drugs known as cholesterol ester transport protein (CETP) inhibitors. A large annoyance on torcetrapib was killed after investigators found an increased risk of death and other cardiovascular outcomes. "I would be more vehement about anacetrapib if I hadn't seen what happened to its cousin torcetrapib," Weintraub said. "Torcetrapib raised HDL astoundingly but that was fully neutralized by the increase in cardiovascular events".