Once-a-day heart combo pill shows promise in study

Yahoo! News / The Associated Press ^ | Marh 30, 2009 | Marilynn Marchione

[2ndDivisionVet]

It's been a dream for a decade: a single daily pill combining aspirin, cholesterol medicine and blood pressure drugs — everything people need to prevent heart attacks and strokes in a cheap, generic form. Skeptics said five medicines rolled into a single pill would mean five times more side effects. Some people would get drugs they don't need, while others would get too little. One-size-fits-all would turn out to fit very few, they warned. Now the first big test of the "polypill" has proved them wrong.

The experimental combo pill was as effective as nearly all of its components taken alone, with no greater side effects, a major study found. Taking it could cut a person's risk of heart disease and stroke roughly in half, the study concludes.

The approach needs far more testing — as well as approval from the Food and Drug Administration, something that could take years — but it could make heart disease prevention much more common and more effective, doctors say.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Sounds like a good idea for many people.

[ReagansShinyHair]

Of course it’s going to “do well” in the study. There’s a lot of money behind making it “do well.”

[dawn53]

I’ve seen the Fugitive...I don’t trust the pharmaceutical companies and their reported “side effects.” /sarc

[Dubya]

Sounds like a very good idea to me.

[OrangeHoof]

If you need all these meds and there aren't any negative side effects, then one all-purpose pill is fine with me and it probably goes down easier. But if you don't need all five, I don't think it is necessarily smart.

I, for one, take a pill that combines avandia with metformin for blood sugar. If I had to take both separately, I'd have to pay double the co-pay so I'm fine with them both being in one pill.

OTOH, if I only needed one and not the other, it seems like a waste of medicine to be taking both.

[Misterioso]

A polypill also would need FDA approval, even though all of its components have long been sold separately. And establishing the proper doses could become a regulatory nightmare, Cannon warned.

Forget it, folks. Keep taking your combo regimen prescribed by your cardiologist. A one-pill panacea is a loser.

[steve86]

It isn’t going to have the correct individual dosages of the respective drugs for many patients. Hypertension drugs, especially, have to be fine tuned. They underplay this problem in the article but it’s real.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

Heart ping.

[Redcitizen]

I’d rather have some old fashioned snake oil in a bottle.

http://www.answers.com/topic/snake-oil-1

[iowamark]

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-a-bitter-pill-to-swallow-1657990.html
“A packet of polypills would cost pennies to make.

There is the rub. It can be done so cheaply that there is no incentive for the pharmaceutical industry to stump up the money to run the requisite clinical trials. If there will be not that much profit why shell out all that cash? It is the same logic which prevents drug companies from working on a cure for malaria, a disease that kills mainly poor people who could not afford to pay for any treatment even if there was one, while pouring millions into improving indigestion relief medicines to ease the overweight stomachs of the obese rich world.”

[neverdem]

Effects of a polypill (Polycap) on risk factors in middle-aged individuals without cardiovascular disease (TIPS): a phase II, double-blind, randomised trial