New cholesterol drug data 'spectacular': MD

An experimental drug boosted good cholesterol so high and dropped bad cholesterol so low in a study that doctors were stunned and voiced hopes for an entirely new way of preventing heart attacks and strokes.

"We are the most excited we have been in decades," said Dr. Christopher Cannon of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, who led the study of the drug for Merck & Company.

The drug, anacetrapib (an-uh-SEHT'-ruh-pihb), will not be on the market anytime soon. It needs more testing to see if its dramatic effects on cholesterol will translate into fewer heart attacks, strokes and deaths. Merck plans a 30,000-patient study to answer that question, and it will take several years.

But the magnitude of the new medicine's effects excited doctors at an American Heart Association conference in Chicago, where results were presented on Wednesday.

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