New drug huge leap in biggest killer battle
APIONEERING new drug has been clinically proven to decrease the chance of someone dying from a heart attack or stroke.
Following a worldwide trial involving 27,500 “high-risk” patients, evolocumab, also known as Repatha, was found to radically lower cholesterol levels.
The pioneering study, which involved scientists at Swansea University, found that evolocumab reduced the risks of heart attack and stroke by 27% and 21% respectively versus cholesterol-lowering statin therapy. The British Heart Foundation said the findings were a significant advance in fighting the biggest killer in the world.
Around 15 million people die each year from heart attacks or stroke.
The results of the study, which cost around $1bn and was paid for by the maker of the drug, Amgen, were published yesterday in The New England Journal of Medicine.
They were presented at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology.
“This is a game-changer for highrisk patients,” said Sean Harper, executive vice-president of research and development at Amgen.
“Even though these patients were optimally treated with the latest therapies, they were still at high risk for an additional cardiac event. It’s remarkable to see such a large impact in reducing cardiac events given that this patient population was only on evolocumab for about two years.”
Professor Peter Sever, of Imperial College London and a member of the study’s executive committee, said it was “probably the most important trial result of a cholesterol lowering drug in over 20 years”.
Statins such as Lipitor and Crestor are cheap and lower so-called “bad” cholesterol, but some people can’t tolerate or get enough help from them.
But evolocumab is given as a shot once or twice a month and is part of a novel class of medicines that drop this cholesterol to “unprecedented levels”.
The drug has been designed to target a protein in the liver with the name PCSK9.
It makes the organ better at whipping bad cholesterol out of the blood and breaking it down.
Evolocumab is thought to cost the UK’s NHS about £2,000 per year per patient where it is already being given to people who do not respond to statins.