AstraZeneca's Crestor has many side effects

AstraZeneca's cholesterol-lowering drug Crestor has more than twice the side effects of rival statin drugs, including deaths, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.

Adverse effects include muscle damage known as rhabdomyolysis; proteinuria or protein in the urine; nephropathy, a reduced ability of the kidneys to filter toxins from the blood; and kidney failure.

But the American Heart Association, which published the study in its journal Circulation, said the drug was still generally safe if prescribed properly, and urged patients not to panic or to stop taking the drug.

Dr. Richard Karas of the Tuft-New England Medical Center in Boston, who led the study, said his team found a rate of 28 adverse events per million prescriptions of Crestor, known generically as rosuvastatin.

He said that was about 2.2 times more than the adverse events seen with simvastatin, made by Merck and Co. under the brand name Zocor and 6.8 times higher than atorvastatin, made by Pfizer Inc. under the brand name Lipitor.

Karas said there were six per million deaths on Crestor as compared to 3 per million for Zocor, 1 per million with Bristol Myers Squibb's Pravachol and 2 per million for Lipitor.

Lipitor

Lipitor is used for those who have abnormally high cholesterol levels. When taken together with a low-fat diet, this medicine can effectively reduce LDL cholesterol, commonly referred to as the "bad" cholesterol, triglyceride levels, and total cholesterol, while increasing the HDL, or "good" cholesterol.