AstraZeneca anti-cholesterol drug 'safe and effective'

Astrazeneca has stepped up the marketing campaign for Crestor, its new cholesterol lowering drug, as it fights to persuade the medical community it is safe and more effective than its rivals.

The company presented data to a meeting of cardiologists from 75 countries being in Sydney yesterday. The findings set out the benefits of Crestor over rivals from Merck and Bristol-Myers Squibb, when measured against new medical guidelines.

It said four-month trials involving 1,000 patients showed that Crestor was significantly better than the other two drugs at lowering the "bad" cholesterol that leads to clogged arteries and heart disease. It is also better at raising the levels of "good" cholesterol which carries fat properly through the body.

Presenting the results, Philip Barter, professor at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, said: "There is no doubt that this new statin will enable us to get more patients to cholesterol goals than we ever could before."

AstraZeneca is struggling to develop a blockbuster presence in the crowded market for anti-cholesterol drugs, called statins. Pfizer, which has the market leading drug, Lipitor, maintains that AstraZeneca's published data shows little difference in performance over its own.

AstraZeneca must conduct new trials of Crestor to ascertain at which dose the severe side-effects to statins – which include a potentially fatal muscle-wasting disease – start to kick in. Baycol, German rival Bayer's statin, was taken off the market after being linked to about 100 deaths.

Crestor was planned for launch in the key US market in the third quarter of this year, but that date is unlikely after delays with the US regulators.

AstraZeneca needs Crestor to be a blockbuster success because one of its biggest existing drugs, the ulcer treatment Losec, has gone off patent. Copycat versions of Losec could be on the market later this year if AstraZeneca loses a vital court case in the US.