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For "bad" cholesterol, lower is better; dual drug therapy may help

High cholesterol, in particular high low-density lipoprotein (LDL), the so-called bad cholesterol, is a key cause of heart disease. A large clinical trial called IMPROVE-IT set out in 2005 to answer two key questions about LDL:

How low should drug therapy drive LDL?
Can drugs other than statins, the gold standard for lowering cholesterol, help?

The results of IMPROVE-IT were recently published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Dr. Deepak L. Bhatt, Editor in Chief of the Harvard Heart Letter, talked about the significance of the IMPROVE-IT findings with Dr. Christopher P. Cannon, the trial's lead investigator, and Dr. John A. Jarcho, an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.

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