New drug fights toughest cholesterol - ABC 12 – WJRT – Flint, MI

(03/13/13) - For some people, even the healthiest of diets and exercise regimens is no match for out of control cholesterol. But a newly approved drug could be the help thousands of patients have been waiting for.

"Heaven forbid something does happen to me, my babies have a really good idea of who I am through my photography," says Wenter Blair's, who suffers from an inherited condition called HoFH.

Her body cannot remove the bad cholesterol from her blood, "every night I go to bed fearful that it might be my last night."

Wenter's LDL levels are usually around 350. She had three heart attacks before she was 43. "I know I don't have it under control and it scares the living crud out of me."

Kynamro, says Paula Soteropoulos, was recently FDA approved to treat HoFH, "a technology that's been in development for 30 years and this is the first real breakthrough in that technology."

Soteropoulos, the general manager of developer Genzyme, says the once-a-week injection stops the production of cholesterol.

She says a clinical trial found, on average, patients taking Kynamro saw their LDL levels drop 25 percent, "this is getting them to levels they have never seen before."

Wenter says this and other drugs in the works are giving her a better picture of what her future could be. "I want to live a really long time and without them I won't see the longevity that I so crave."

Kynamro is not a replacement for a patient's HoFH medications. It is designed to be added to their treatment regimen. The FDA reports the most serious risk of Kynamro is liver toxicity. Other side effects include nausea, headache, and flu-like symptoms.