Merck keeping secret from statin users.

Secret Revealed
Merck has had a patent on a statin/coQ10 combination since the late 1980's. The following claim from one of two 1990 Merck patents (4,933,165) states that adding add CoQ10 to statin drugs overcomes statin induced myopathy: "A pharmaceutical composition comprising a pharmaceutical carrier and an effective antihypercholesterolemic amount of an HMG-CoA reductase inhibitor and an amount of Coenzyme Q.sub.10 effective to counteract HMG-CoA reductase inhibitor-associated skeletal muscle myopathy."

Unfortunately, the combination was never introduced into the marketplace. This should have been a no-brainer given that research shows patients on the combination live an average of 8 years longer versus only 5 for statins alone. This should not come as a surprise given the fact that statins deplete the body of coQ10, rendering the performance of the mitochondria in our cells less effective. Excuse the sarcasm, but three more years of selling statins - what's not to like for Merck?

All About Cost
In our opinion, Merck knew the world supply of CoQ10 was limited, was costly to produce, and predicted that production would only supply one-sixth of the world's statin users. In 1990, when Merck sought and received the patent for Mevacor and other statin drugs formulated with up to 1,000 mg of coenzyme Q10 to prevent or alleviate cardiomyopathy, a serious condition that can cause congestive heart failure, they realized the cost of the drug would be too exorbitant to make it a worldwide blockbuster.

Why Not Make Amends Now?
Lawyers note that to launch such a product would be a tacit acknowledgment that statins alone do indeed cause earlier deaths, and the class-action suits would fly.

The Ramifications
As a result of their tremendously reckless decision, Merck made the issue worse by not educating physicians about the important of supplementing CoQ10 to offset the dangers of these drugs. And because they hold the patent, other drug companies are prevented from coming out with a statin/CoQ10 product. To add insult to injury, a new study says that the global campaign to use statins as a preventive therapy in healthy individuals is misguided.

New Data Says Preventive Statin Therapy Campaign Misguided
Rolling back suggestions from previous studies, a Johns Hopkins study of 950 healthy men and women has shown that taking daily doses of a cholesterol-lowering statin medication to protect coronary arteries and ward off heart attack or stroke may not be needed. The Johns Hopkins team found that nearly 95 percent of all heart attacks, strokes or heart-related deaths occurred in the half of study participants with some measurable buildup of artery-hardening calcium in the blood vessels; hence, only this subgroup might have benefited from preventive drug therapy.

Seventy-five percent of all heart emergencies occurred in the quarter with the highest calcium scores. The 47 percent of study participants with no detectable levels of calcium buildup in their blood vessels suffered about 5 percent of heart-disease related events during the six-year study, meaning that drug therapy may not have offered any coronary protection. "Statin therapy should not be approached like diet and exercise as a broadly based solution for preventing coronary heart disease. These are lifelong medications with potential, although rare side effects, and physicians should only consider their use for those patients at greatest risk, especially those with high coronary calcium scores," says researchers. "As many as 5 percent of people on statins develop serious side effects, such as muscle pain. One in 255 will develop diabetes."

Results of the study do underscore the importance of measuring coronary artery calcium deposits in predicting who is really at risk of suffering a heart attack. And the long-term ramifications of a CoQ10-depleted world population from high statin drug is unknown.

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