New cholesterol drug lowers LDL levels when statins aren’t enough, study finds

A new medication that combines an already approved drug with a new unapproved one has been shown to cut the level of LDL, or “bad” cholesterol, when statins aren’t helping enough.

A new medication that combines an already approved drug with a new unapproved one has been shown to cut the level of LDL, or “bad” cholesterol, when statins aren’t helping enough. 

In the Phase 3 trial, Cleveland Clinic researchers found that the combination of the new drug, obicetrapib, with an established medication, ezetimibe, reduced low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels by 48.6% after about three months’ use — producing more effective results than either drug alone. Ezetimibe is a cholesterol-lowering drug that is often prescribed with statins to reduce LDL even more.  

The research was presented Wednesday during a late-breaking science session at the annual meeting of the European Atherosclerosis Society in Glasgow, Scotland, and simultaneously published in The Lancet. 

In the multicenter clinical trial, the lead researcher, Dr. Ashish Sarraju, a preventive cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic, and his colleagues enrolled 407 patients with a median age of 68 with LDL cholesterol levels greater than 70 mg/dL even though they had taken medication to lower it.

The participants were randomly assigned to four groups: a group for a pill that combined obicetrapib with ezetimibe, a group for each of the drugs separately and a placebo group. All participants continued on the medications they were taking before they started the trial, along with the medications being studied.