Word: triparanol
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...should be discontinued until all possible controversy is put to rest." Thus last week almost half a million patients learned that they could no longer hope to cut down the cholesterol circulating in their blood - and perhaps reduce the danger of heart attacks - simply by swallowing a daily 35^ triparanol capsule...
...Triparanol (trade name: MER/29) was marketed two years ago with only a background rumble of misgivings (TIME, June 6, 1960). The drug had produced no serious side effects in the first 2,000 patients treated experimentally. But the more it was used, the more reports suggested that it might be a bad actor. At least four patients are said to have developed cataracts while being treated by the drug...
Merrell has admitted many cases of baldness, change of hair color and loss of body hair. Skin reactions ranged from dryness and itching to peeling and development of a fish-scale texture. In a few cases, triparanol was suspected of cutting down the body's protective white blood cells...
Widely touted preparations such as triparanol and nicotinic acid (one of the B vitamins, also called niacin) do lower blood cholesterol, but they have undesirable side effects. Triparanol interferes with the liver's formation of cholesterol, forces it instead to produce a suspicious substance called desmosterol that is chemically related to cholesterol-and may even have the same damaging effect on arteries. Nicotinic acid, to be effective, must be administered in massive doses. The result: flushing, itching, nausea, headaches, changes in the blood...
...Triparanol, say Merrell researchers, works by blocking a late stage of cholesterol manufacture in the liver. This means that unusually large amounts of a preceding substance, desmosterol, are left sloshing around in the blood. As Boston's noted heart specialist, Dr. Robert W. Wilkins, has pointed out, nobody knows yet what effect this added desmosterol will have on patients. So far, undesirable reactions have been few and mild (nausea and occasional rashes). Whatever triparanol's ultimate effect on patients' health and survival, the drug gives physicians a chance to find some of the answers that laboratory research...