Link to cancer deaths may cut into Vytorin sales

A review found that more patients getting Vytorin died from cancer, although overall rates of the disease weren't higher. (SCHERING-PLOUGH CORP. VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS/2004 FILE)

MUNICH - Schering-Plough Corp. and Merck & Co. may see sales of their cholesterol drug Vytorin drop even further after it was linked to cancer deaths in a three-study analysis intended to reassure patients.

The review found that more patients getting Vytorin died from cancer, although overall rates of the disease weren't higher, according to a publication of the results in the New England Journal of Medicine. Doctors representing US and European cardiologists said they wouldn't recommend the medicine for a majority of heart patients.

"This can't help" the drug's sales, said Gordon Tomaselli, a spokesman for the American Heart Association and a cardiologist at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, in an interview yesterday at the European Society of Cardiology conference in Munich.

Tim Gardner, president of the American Heart Association, said he wouldn't recommend taking the treatment to lower high cholesterol because the cancer link hasn't been completely refuted. Patients who can't otherwise get their blood lipids low enough, and those currently enrolled in a trial, should stay on the drug, both doctors said.

"We are moderately reassured, but we are not completely reassured," Gardner said.

New Vytorin prescriptions fell to 65,461 for the week ending Aug. 22 from 73,408 in the week ending July 18, the last week before preliminary cancer data were announced. More than 23,000 patients taking the drug stopped it in this time period, according to Bloomberg data.

Total prescriptions first dropped after the company released data in January showing Vytorin reduced artery-clogging plaque no better than a generic form of Zocor, a drug that is combined with Schering-Plough's Zetia to make Vytorin.

Schering-Plough reported a 19 percent drop in second-quarter profit as Vytorin sales fell 9 percent to $1.2 billion. Merck, which posted a 5 percent increase in quarterly profit on rising sales of its diabetes pill Januvia, said it wouldn't reaffirm its 2008 earnings forecast because of the Vytorin study.

Merck, which has lost 40 percent of its value this year, fell 84 cents, or 2.4 percent, to $34.83 yesterday in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. Schering fell 31 cents, or 1.6 percent, to $19.09. Its shares have dropped 28 percent this year.

The cancer fear was first raised in July, when a study found patients taking Vytorin were more likely to develop cancer than those getting a placebo. To determine whether that was a real or chance finding, researchers examined data from two larger studies already underway. The three studies taken together didn't find more cases of cancer, the researchers said.

The analysis did find that more patients taking Vytorin died from cancer. Those results raise additional questions about the drug's safety and shouldn't be dismissed, according to an editorial in the New England Journal.

Most doctors recommend Vytorin as a fallback therapy for those who don't benefit enough from other treatments, said Heinz Drexel, a cardiologist at Feldkirch hospital in Austria. Doctors should stick to current guidelines, Douglas Weaver, the president of the American College of Cardiology said. "Use statins first," Weaver said. Vytorin "is not a first-line therapy."