Kos Pharmaceuticals applauds new study recommending Niaspan in combination with statins to achieve cholesterol targets

Kos Pharmaceuticals, Inc. recently commented on a University of Pennsylvania study, recently published in the American Journal of Cardiology (February 15, 2001), demonstrating the powerful effects of adding the Kos product, Niaspan(R), to a statin. The report showed that the addition of Niaspan to a daily dose of a statin was safe and highly effective in further improving levels of LDL (the bad cholesterol), HDL (the good cholesterol) and triglycerides. The report concluded that the addition of Niaspan to a statin should be considered for patients who have been unable to achieve lipid goals with statin therapy alone.

In this study, 66 patients were administered Niaspan as adjunctive therapy to a statin, when statin monotherapy was not adequate to achieve either LDL cholesterol goals or desired levels of HDL cholesterol or triglycerides, despite using moderate-to-high doses of various statins, including atorvastatin and simvastatin. By adding Niaspan to a statin regimen for these refractory patients, levels of LDL and triglycerides were further reduced by 31% and 27%, respectively and levels of HDL cholesterol were increased by 27%.

For those patients who did not achieve desired LDL targets following statin therapy, Niaspan further reduced LDL cholesterol three times more than would be predicted with titrating to a higher dose of a statin. Equally important, the addition of Niaspan was safe and well tolerated with no reports of muscle aches and no clinically significant changes in liver function tests, uric acid or blood sugar levels.

"These results demonstrate that for patients who have not been able to achieve desired LDL levels or who remain dyslipidemic, especially with a low HDL cholesterol, while taking appropriate statin therapy, the addition of Niaspan is safe and highly effective in further improving the overall lipid profile," said Daniel Rader, MD, Director of Preventive Cardiovascular Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. "For such patients, who are relatively common, the addition of Niaspan to the statin should be seriously considered because of the high cardiovascular risk in this group."

The University of Pennsylvania study echoed the findings of the HDL Atherosclerosis Treatment Study (HATS) presented at the American Heart Association conference in November, 2000. That study concluded that the combination of niacin, the key ingredient in Niaspan, and statin therapy produced "strikingly favorable" results in treating coronary heart disease patients. More specifically, the combination was credited with virtually halting atherosclerosis progression and reducing heart attacks by 70%. The data from these two studies confirmed earlier ones showing that combination therapy with niacin is more effective than monotherapy in reducing cardiac events.

Source: Kos Pharmaceuticals, Inc.