Merck 'Evergreens' Off-Patent Lipitor By Creating Combination Drug With No Additional Benefit

By Glyn MoodyBig pharma often gets a rather rough ride here on Techdirt, what with its attempts to stop governments granting licenses for life-saving and low-cost generics in emerging countries, engaging in legal action to prevent drug safety information being released, and paying kickbacks to doctors. But sometimes you get the impression that drug companies really go out of their way to be disliked, as this great post by Josh Bloom on the Medical Progress Today site, pointed out to us by John Wilbanks, demonstrates:[Merck] just received approval for the cholesterol-lowering combination drug Liptruzet -- a functionally similar (identical?) version of their own Vytorin, which is a combination of their statin Zocor and Schering's (now part of Merck) cholesterol absorption blocker Zetia (ezetimibe). Liptruzet, ironically happens to be a combination of Zetia and atorvastatin (generic Lipitor). Yes -- Merck is substituting a former Pfizer drug for their own Zocor with combining it with Zetia to make a "new" medication with additional patent protection.If it were just another case of trivial "innovation", the story wouldn't hold much interest. But there's something more here:[Liptruzet] reduced LDL cholesterol more for patients who took Lipitor alone, but it did not reduce patients' chances of developing heart disease. Not surprisingly, this left some doctors to wonder why it was approved at all.Bloom quotes an interesting comment o...
Source: PharmaGossip - Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: Source Type: blogs