Recent stories in the news reported a new Vytorn study claiming that the medication had “no benefit” and that it significantly “increased the risk for developing cancer”. Such bold statements are misleading.

The actual , called SEAS, was a 4 year examination of the use of Vytorin versus placebo in 1,873 patients with aortic stenosis. (Aortic stenosis is a disease of one of the valves in the heart which causes it to not open properly.) Vytorin lowers cholesterol and treats atherosclerosis and predictably had no effect on the heart valve disease – hence the media claim of “no benefit”. What the news failed to report was that patients on Vytorin had a 22% reduction in cardiovascular events (i.e. heart attacks, strokes etc.

In SEAS it was noted that the group that received Vytorin developed 101 cases of cancer while the placebo group only had 65 cases of cancer – hence the claim that Vytorin causes cancer. It’s important to keep in mind that the numbers we are talking about are relatively small, and in fact almost all experts attribute the difference in cancer rates to chance. Cancer never appeared as a problem in the tens of thousands of patients involved in the multiple pre and post-marketing studies with Vytorin or any other statin-based cholesterol lowering treatment. Also, most carcinogens lead to cancer in specific sites (i.e. cigarette smoke and lung cancer) but the cancers in SEAS involved multiple sites (i.e. skin, breast and colon). Additionally, most carcinogens take decades to cause disease but in SEAS most of the cancers appeared within the first two years – suggesting no cause and effect relationship.

Because of the SEAS publicity preliminary results of 2 large ongoing Vytorin studies (SHARP and IMPROVE-IT) were examined. Together, these studies follow 20,617 patients. In these trials there is NOT an increased incidence of cancer in Vytorin users.

If your cholesterol is controlled on Vytorin do not stop taking it without first talking to your health care provider. A close examination of all the facts does not support the media hype that Vytorin use is associated with an increased risk of cancer.