The business stories that matter, by Fortune's Colin Barr
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March 31, 2008, 9:51 am

Update: Schering-Plough slumps again

Update: It’s open season on Schering-Plough (SGP). Shares of the drug company plunged 26% in early morning action Monday to a 52-week low after another big setback for Vytorin, the cholesterol drug the company makes with partner Merck (MRK). A panel of heart doctors at the American College of Cardiology conference in Chicago Sunday urged that physicians use other drugs to reduce patients’ cholesterol, after data that showed Vytorin, unlike older drugs called statins, failed to treat heart disease. The decision is likely to lead to a plunge in sales of Vytorin, which combines Schering-Plough’s Zetia with Merck’s Zocor and posted $5 billion in sales last year. A loss of those sales will hit smaller Schering-Plough especially hard, though Merck saw its shares drop 16% just before 10 a.m. The declines at Schering-Plough and Merck are the latest evidence that scientists may not know as much about treating heart disease as they once thought - though statins such as Lipitor emerge from the latest developments largely unscathed. “People need to turn back to statins,” Yale cardiologist Dr. Harlan Krumholz said.

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Colin Barr covers business and finance for Fortune.com. Previously he was an editor at TheStreet.com and author of the weekly Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street column, and an editor at Dow Jones Newswires.
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