New Cholesterol Drug ‘Repatha’ Could Slash Heart Attack Risk

Medical experts who gathered on the weekend for the annual American College of Cardiology's annual in San Diego were hopeful that cholesterol-lowering drugs called "PCSK9 inhibitors" from Amgen of the US and Sanofi of France will get an approval this year at the US Regulatory Drug Commission.

According to Financial Times, the PCSK9 inhibitor otherwise known as "Repatha" or "evolocumab" aims to suppress the production of LDL from the liver which is considered bad cholesterol. Moreover, the drug companies said that Repatha does not aim to replace statins but would be an advantage to those who have an intolerance for statins.

"This is a landmark time for patients that have cardiovascular disease. We are about to witness a sea change in the trajectory of this illness," Scott Wasserman, executive medical director of global development at Amgen said.

The research on evolucomab is initiated by Dr. Marc Sabatine whose study is first published in the New England Journal of Medicine, reports from US News said.

In his study, Dr. Sabatine found that the experimental drug evolucomab, increases the likelihood for at least fifty percent of patients suffering of heart attack or heart stroke in a hospital who underwent a surgery.

The research has involved at least 4,465 patients who had been taking the drug and had already completed one of the 12 phase II or III trials.

"Compared to patients on conventional therapy alone, those who also got the experimental drug evolocumab were half as likely to die, suffer a heart attack or a stroke or be in the hospital to have a procedure to open blocked arteries during the one-year follow-up. It's a very impressive risk reduction," Dr. Sabatine said.

Though the drug did not get approval yet but cardiologists like Steve Nissen, chief of cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio is confident that regulators will be attracted to its cholesterol-lowering ability, Bloomberg Business reports.

The drug, according to Nissen, will also impact insurance companies to participate in the fight against heart attack, a lucrative plan expected to generate more than $2 billion in one year.

"It helps the companies developing these drugs to reassure the Food and Drug Administration that early approval, based on cholesterol-lowering benefits, is not a risky proposition," the cardiologist said.