TRENTON, N.J. – Most of the heart disease experts who urged more people to take cholesterol-lowering drugs this week have made money from the companies selling those medicines.
Consumer groups Friday blasted the new cholesterol guidelines as being tainted by the influence of major pharmaceuticals that make blockbusters such as Lipitor and Pravachol. Last year, drug makers earned $26 billion worldwide on cholesterol-lowering medicines, the top-selling class of drugs.
The new guidelines issued Monday by the American Heart Association and the federal government were aimed at preventing heart attacks. They were written by nine of the country’s top cholesterol experts. All but one have received consulting or speaking fees, research money or other support from makers of the most widely used anti-cholesterol drugs.
The new guidelines would add about 7 million more Americans to the 36 million already encouraged to take the pills to lower their cholesterol, said Dr. James Cleeman, coordinator of the National Cholesterol Education Program, which drew up the guidelines. NCEP is run by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
Cleeman said that regardless of connections to the drug industry, the advice to high-risk heart patients to lower their LDL, or “bad cholesterol,” is sound science. The new guidelines were based on results of five drug studies since 2001, and about 80 experts besides the authors reviewed and endorsed them, said Cleeman, who was the only author without financial ties.
But consumer advocates said the failure to make the conflicts of interest clear is inexcusable.
“It’s outrageous they didn’t provide disclosure of the conflicts of interest,” said Merrill Goozner, with the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
“It doesn’t mean that their research is wrong,” Goozner added, but doctors and the public need to know “that the people who are giving you this advice have their research funded by a party who has a self-interest in the outcome of that research.”
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