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Part 1: My Spirit is Broken: Will the New Statin Guidelines Do More Harm Than Good? “You use them or you die.” This is what a doctor told Sulette Brown, a psychotherapist from Oklahoma, when she balked at taking statins, after she’d been rushed to the emergency room for a heart attack. Since that night, her life has changed in ways she could not have imagined.

WASHINGTON -- GlaxoSmithKline LLC will pay $3 billion and plead guilty to promoting two popular drugs for unapproved uses and to failing to disclose important safety information on a third in the largest health care fraud settlement in U.S. history, the Justice Department said Monday. Accompanying the criminal case was a civil settlement in which the government said the company's improper marketing included providing doctors with expensive resort vacations, European hunting trips, high-paid speaking tours and even tickets to a Madonna concert. The $3 billion combined criminal-civil fine will be the largest penalty ever paid by a drug company, Deputy...

Statins, traditionally known as cholesterol-lowering drugs, may reduce mortality among patients hospitalized with influenza, according to a new study released online by the Journal of Infectious Diseases. It is the first published observational study to evaluate the relationship between statin use and mortality in hospitalized patients with laboratory-confirmed influenza virus infection, according to Vanderbilt's William Schaffner, M.D., professor and chair of Preventive Medicine. "We may be able to combine statins with antiviral drugs to provide better treatment for patients seriously ill with influenza," said Schaffner, who co-authored the study led by Meredith Vandermeer, MPH, of the Oregon Public Health Division.

The risk of developing type 2 diabetes rises with increasing doses of statin therapy, according to the findings of a large meta-analysis in the June 22/29 issue of JAMA. "Our findings suggest that clinicians should be vigilant for the development of diabetes in patients receiving intensive statin therapy," said Dr. David Preiss of the BHF Glasgow (Scotland) Cardiovascular Research Centre at the University of Glasgow, and his associates. Several recent studies have suggested that statin therapy may raise the risk of diabetes, and some have indicated that the risk is higher at higher doses of the drugs. Dr. Preiss and...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Pfizer Inc said Monday it was voluntarily withdrawing advertising for its Lipitor cholesterol drug featuring Dr. Robert Jarvik, inventor of the Jarvik artificial heart, because its ads led to "misimpressions." ads involving Jarvik had come under scrutiny, including from a House Committee as part of an investigation into celebrity endorsements of prescription medicines. Democratic lawmakers had voiced concern that Jarvik's qualifications were misrepresented in widely seen television commercials touting the blockbuster drug. They said he seemed to be dispensing medical advice even though he is not a practicing physician. On his Web site, Jarvik describes himself...

WASHINGTON —  A House investigation is casting a wider net into whether artificial-heart pioneer Robert Jarvik improperly endorsed a cholesterol-reducing medication in a number of advertisements. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell, D-Mich., and committee member Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., sent a letter Tuesday to FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach demanding to see records housed in the FDA's Division of Drug Marketing, Advertising and Communications office regarding recent advertisements for the cholesterol-decreasing drug Lipitor. Dingell and Stupak asked for all records relating to print, radio, TV or Internet advertisements for Lipitor featuring Jarvik, setting a Feb. 5 deadline. The...

Dr. Robert Jarvik is known as the inventor of the artificial heart more than 20 years ago. More recently he’s known as the pitchman for Lipitor, a top-selling cholesterol-lowering drug. Now Dr. Jarvik is known as the man congressional investigators want to talk to about his work for drug maker Pfizer, maker of Lipitor. At $12 billion in sales a year, it’s the best selling drug in the world. Dr. Jarvik tells the television audience in the ads, “I’m glad I take Lipitor, as a doctor and a dad.” The problem is that Dr. Jarvik is not licensed to practice...

It is shaping up to be the biggest shift yet to a generic drug, potentially saving the nation $2 billion a year or more in prescription costs. And scientists and doctors say that for most of the 16 million people in America who take drugs to reduce cholesterol, the low-priced alternative will work as well as the name-brand medicine — Lipitor, which is made by Pfizer and is the nation’s most widely prescribed drug. While Lipitor itself is not available as a generic, a very similar drug made by Merck, Zocor, lost its patent protection last year. The generic version...

On June 19, 1987, Ben & Jerry’s introduced Cherry Garcia, in honor of the man who played lead guitar for the Grateful Dead. The Food and Drug Administration struck back three months later, when it approved the first of a new family of statin drugs that curb cholesterol production in the human liver. A synthetic statin licensed a decade later would become the most lucrative drug in history. At its peak, Lipitor was streaming $14 billion a year into Pfizer’s coffers. Let’s not blame the victim: we don’t choose Cherry Garcia; it chooses us. Lipitor is a lifesaver for 600,000...

Elderly people taking statins had fewer of the twisted nerve-cell fibers that are common in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease, researchers reported last week in a study based on brain autopsies. The significance of the finding remains unclear, but this is the first time the potential effects of the cholesterol-lowering statins on brain pathology have been assessed by autopsy. Epidemiological studies of statins and Alzheimer's have had mixed results. The researchers examined the brains of 110 men and women ages 65 to 79 who were enrolled in a larger study of dementia and had donated their brains for...

Multiple Sclerosis Drug Combined with Lipitor May Stop or Reverse Disease - Dosages Cut in Half with Fewer Negative Side Effects March 16th 2006 Lipitor Combining treatments may improve outcomes for patients with Multiple Sclerosis (MS), according to research done on mice and published online by the Journal of Clinical Investigation. Scott S. Zamvil and colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco found that mice treated with a combination of Glatiramer acetate (GA) and atorvastatin (Lipitor) demonstrated “a significant prevention and reversal of clinical MS severity” of MS symptoms.  Lipitor is a cholesterol lowering drug that has previously been...

Pfizer BrandsPrescription Aricept® (donepezil hydrochloride tablets) Bextra® (valdecoxib) Celebrex® (celecoxib) Lipitor® (atorvastatin calcium) tablets Relpax® (eletriptan HBr) Viagra® (sildenafil citrate) tablets Viracept® (nelfinavir mesylate) Xalatan® (latanoprost ophthalmic solution) Zoloft® (sertraline HCl) Zyrtec® (cetirizine HCl) Over-the-Counter Brands Benadryl Listerine Mouthwash Listerine PocketPaks Neosporin Purell Rogaine Rolaids Sudafed Visine Zantac Lets face it, if Pfizer had not wanted the land, then the SC never would have made the ruling. Hit Pfizer where it hurts, in the pocketbook.

<p>The future of heart disease treatment is coming into focus with a growing emphasis on potent drug cocktails that fight obesity, help smokers quit, ease inflammation and restore a healthy blood-cholesterol balance.</p> <p>The shift may arrive in time for many aging baby boomers, doctors say, with several promising drugs undergoing pivotal tests in humans.</p>

<p>Pfizer’s Lipitor edged out Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Pravachol in a head-to-head competition between the two cholesterol-lowering drugs, a new study reported last week. It appeared to be a disappointing result for study-funder Bristol-Myers. Not to worry, though. There seems to be a move afoot to make sure there are plenty of profits for all.</p>

Lowering cholesterol far below the level that most doctors now consider adequate can substantially reduce patients' risk of having or dying from a heart attack, researchers reported today. The findings, cardiologists say, will greatly change how doctors treat patients with heart disease and will provide the impetus to re-evaluate how low cholesterol levels should be. The study compared high doses of one of the most powerful cholesterol-lowering drugs, Pfizer's Lipitor, to a less potent drug, Pravachol, made by Bristol-Myers Squibb, which conducted the trial. The patients taking Lipitor were significantly less likely to have heart attacks or to require bypass...

ORLANDO, Fla. (Reuters) - Pfizer Inc.'s top-selling cholesterol drug Lipitor can halt, not just slow, the potentially fatal buildup of plaque in clogged arteries, researchers said on Wednesday. The study is the first solid evidence that a prescription drug can stop the build-up of new plaque and even reverse it in some patients. A handful of drugs now available slow the buildup of new plaque, or atherosclerosis, in coronary arteries. "We were excited we could find a regimen, although an intensive one, that could stop the disease in its tracks," said the lead researcher, Dr. Steven Nissen of the Cleveland...

WASHINGTON - Federal investigators discovered more than 30,000 additional bottles of fake Lipitor, a top-selling anti-cholesterol pill, as they worked Tuesday to crack a huge case of medical counterfeiting. Also Tuesday, the manufacturer of real Lipitor, Pfizer Inc., filed suit to stop a pharmaceutical repackaging company and distributor from selling any more fake pills - and to get more information to track the counterfeit's source. Repackager Med-Pro Inc. and Albers Medical Distributors both denied involvement in the counterfeiting. The Food and Drug Administration first uncovered three batches of fake Lipitor almost two weeks ago, and ordered Kansas City-based Albers to...

WASHINGTON, May 23 (Reuters) - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned consumers and health professionals on Friday to check for three counterfeit lots of the cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor that are being recalled by a Kansas City-based distributor. The counterfeit Lipitor posed a potentially significant health hazard and was being voluntarily recalled by Albers Medical Distributors Inc., the FDA said in a statement. Consumers should not take any tablets from packages with labels saying "Repackaged by: MED-PRO, Inc. Lexington, Neb.," with lot numbers 20722V, 04132V and 16942V, the FDA said. All the lots contain 90-tablet bottles. An FDA spokeswoman said...