Posted by Charles Waisbren on August 05, 2015 at 12:00 PM

Now this I find exciting:  A new drug which inhibits the accumulation of cholesterol in our body.  It plummets our serum blood fats (even while on maximum doses of the traditional cholesterol lowering drugs) and consequently dramatically lowers the incidence of stroke and heart attacks.

Three different pharmaceutical companies are going to come out with similar versions of the agent.  It will have to be given subcutaneously (by injection) but only once or twice a month. If I was a young patient with known atherosclerosis and already had a bypass, angioplasty or stroke, I would be first in line to get this treatment.  It will be very expensive and the insurance companies are trying to figure out which type of patient it will be a covered benefit.  

Currently, statin therapy is the standard treatment for many patients with high cholesterol. But a new study published in The New England Journal of Medicine claims a drug called evolocumab could be much more effective; it reduced cholesterol levels so dramatically that patients' risk of cardiovascular events - such as heart attack and stroke - fell by more than half, compared with those receiving standard therapy alone.