Crestor lowers ''bad cholesterol,'' shrinks fat build up in blood vessels

Crestor lowers ''bad cholesterol,'' shrinks fat build up in blood vessels

WASHINGTON - Prevention has always been acknowledged as being better than cure. But doctors now have the option of actually curing the cause that leads to heart disease. Atherosclerosis, or fat clogging up the blood vessels, is the number one cause of heart disease and until now doctors have always focused on stopping the further build up of this fat. Now for the first time a cholesterol-lowering drug promises to actually shrink this fat and "unclog" the arteries or the blood vessels.

An international study has found that the statin or the cholesterol-lowering drug, Crestor dissolved the fat build up in arteries when ingested in high doses. Reporting in the online edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers led by Dr. Steven E. Nissen, of the Cleveland Clinic said that Crestor reduced the low-density lipoprotein, or the "bad cholesterol" by 53.2 percent and increased the good cholesterol or the high-density lipoprotein by 14.7 percent.

The findings of the study were presented at the American College of Cardiology conference in Atlanta. "It's always been the hope that if we gave powerful enough cholesterol lowering drugs, that we could at least partially reverse the plaque buildup in the coronary arteries," Dr Nissen said.

"Until now we really haven't been able to achieve that goal." The plaque shrinkage was measured by a method called as intravenous ultrasound, "These patients had a lot of reduction in plaque volume," Nissen said. "The ability to turn back the clock on this disease is a pretty important concept. We're not merely slowing down the inexorable progression but truly reversing the disease. It's very exciting."

However critics say it is early to tell if Crestor truly reverses the plaque build up since the current study did not compare it with patients who did not use high doses of the drug. Other statins like Lipitor and Zocor have not showed the LDL lowering effect, but their manufacturers Pfizer and Merck respectively are looking to combine them with agents that boost the good cholesterol levels.