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Health and Healthcare

Merck & Schering-Plough Face Cholesterol Firing Squad (MRK, SGP)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Usually drug companies look forward to presenting data on their drugs and medical treatments.  The the American College of Cardiology meeting was this weekend, and the findings and recommendations are worse than bad. 

Shares of Schering-Plough Corp (NYSE: SGP) and Merck & Co (NYSE: MRK) are being hit sharply this morning.  Doctors at this prominent medical meeting recommended that patients try older cholesterol drugs before trying these companies’ newer medicines.

Vytorin and Zetia generate roughly $5 Billion in annual sales and many have questioned the overall results of these for several months.  Doctors are now recommending older statins in high doses, followed by other treatments before putting clients on these drugs.  So these will be garnered to a last line of defense drug group, which will effectively kill the sales if doctors on the local level follow this recommendation.

So far, we have seen Schering-Plough downgraded at both Lehman Brothers and at Goldman Sachs.  Lowering cholesterol doesn’t seem to matter if the arterial plaque still builds up.

Schering-Plough shares had been hit by almost 30% since the questions had started coming out about the efficacy of the drugs.  That was before the drop today.  Shares of Schering-Plough Corp (NYSE: SGP) are down 22% pre-market at $15.08 and shares of Merck & Co (NYSE: MRK) are down 10% at $39.70 in pre-market trading this Monday. 

Jon C. Ogg
March 31, 2008

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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