A controversial cholesterol drug comes under scrutiny today in the "New England Journal of Medicine." The "New York Times" is reporting that the prestigious research journal confronts the firestorm over whether the popular drug Ezetimibe, sold as either Zetia or Vytorin, may be linked to higher cancer deaths.
The Food and Drug Administration approved the medicine in 2002 after clinical trials of a mere 39-hundred patients, none of whom took the drug longer than three months.
The drug has never been shown to help patients live longer or avoid heart attacks, though it does lower so-called "bad" LDL cholesterol by about 15 to 20-percent.
That hasn't stopped doctors from prescribing it, and sales of the medicine reached five-point-two-billion dollars last year.
More than three million people a day take the drug.
The medical journal's website has published two articles and an editorial analyzing several other research trials, one of which found a surprising rise in cancer deaths among those who took the drug.
Some cancer researchers are agreeing with the drug's makers that the higher deaths could be coincidence.
Physicians and researchers are demanding clinical trials of the drug's effectiveness in at least ten-thousand people over several years.