Vytorin and Other Headlines: What’s a Patient to Do?

The recent news about a cholesterol-lowering drug called Vytorin is a good case study for how you, as a patient, should respond to what you read or hear in the news about your prescribed medical therapy.

A 720-patient study called ENHANCE, released this week, showed that Vytorin, a one-pill combination of a statin called Zocor and a non-statin called Zetia, was no better than Zocor alone in keeping fatty plaque from building up in the arteries in the neck. Zetia lowers cholesterol levels by decreasing the amount of cholesterol in your diet that gets into your system, and is often prescribed for patients for whom statins alone do not reduce cholesterol to the desired levels.

The announcement of the study results prompted a flood of calls to doctors from worried Vytorin patients. That’s precisely what you, as a patient, should do when you hear news about a medical therapy that may affect you – talk to your doctor about what it means for you.

What worries me is that the news often generated from medical studies can create panic. Some patients might stop taking their prescribed medications because they are scared by the news they hear without consulting their doctor. You should never stop taking any medication without first consulting your doctor.

1/17/2008 The source archive page carried a “Read all” link; the remainder of this post was not recovered and has not been reconstructed.