As a daily pill, Lipfendra provides those with high cholesterol an alternative to needles.
“Being able to have an oral version of this medication is really important,” said Yu-Ming Ni, MD, a cardiologist and lipidologist at MemorialCare Heart and Vascular Institute at Orange Coast Medical Center in Fountain Valley, CA.
“I have a lot of people who are hesitant to even start because they don’t want to give themselves injections,” Ni told Healthline. “Now you’ve got this oral version. It’s going to be a little bit easier for people to take a pill every day.”
Because Lipfendra works differently from a statin, people can use both medications.
Anurag Mehta, MD, a preventive cardiologist at Emory Healthcare and assistant professor of medicine at Emory University School of Medicine, said the two drugs target “two different biological pathways” to reach “the same end result” — lower LDL cholesterol.
For individuals whose statin isn’t enough on its own, “those patients would be candidates for this new medicine,” Mehta said.
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