Drug cuts cholesterol without side effects

MANHASSETT, N.Y., March 10 (UPI) -- U.S. and Swedish scientists have found an experimental thyroid drug reduces cholesterol without side effects suffered by some people using statins.

The researchers from the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, Johns Hopkins University and Sweden's Karolinska University Hospital tested a drug called Eprotirome in patients suffering high cholesterol levels.

What is not known from the Phase II study is whether the drug will ultimately protect patients from heart disease, but Dr. Irwin Klein an endocrinologist at the Feinstein Institute, said he thinks it might work to reduce cardiovascular disease.

"Every percentage that you lower cholesterol, you lower the risk for heart disease," he said. "High cholesterol is the single most modifiable risk factor."

The study also determined the experimental medicine lowered a cholesterol product in the blood called lipoprotein A, which is damaging to the heart. There are no available medicines that lower lipoprotein A and Eprotirome lowered the levels by 33 percent.

The researchers said if the study's results are confirmed and replicated, the drug might ultimately be used as an alternative to statins, which can cause such side effects as muscle pains, myopathy and tiredness.

The study appears in the New England Journal of Medicine.