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IMPROVE-IT Go-Ahead Gives Merck Temporary Reprieve On Vytorin

 
• By Emily Hayes

Large outcomes study of Vytorin (ezetimibe/simvastatin) is allowed to carry on, reassuring investors that significant safety problems are unlikely to emerge. The development coincides with release of full results from the outcomes trial HPS2-THRIVE, in which Merck’s niacin-containing Tredaptive proved unsafe as well as ineffective.

A data safety monitoring board’s decision to allow the IMPROVE-IT outcomes study of Vytorin to carry on gives Merck & Co. Inc. some breathing room ahead of the combination drug’s patent expiration by early 2017.

On March 12, Merck said that a data safety monitoring board for the IMPROVE-IT trial of Vytorin, which combines Merck’s Zetia (ezetimibe) and its statin simvastatin (Zocor and generics), completed...

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