• The Wall Street Journal , Monday, November 10, 2008 10:45 AM

A study of 17,802 participants entering prime heart-attack age finds that AstraZeneca's cholesterol drug, Crestor, sharply lowers the risk of heart attacks among people who show no evidence of serious heart disease. The findings could substantially broaden the market for statins, the world's best-selling class of medicines, Ron Winslow writes. But not so fast.

AstraZeneca can't aggressively market the results until it gets regulatory approval of a label change reflecting the data. That isn't likely until 2010.

And experts are split on the likely impact of the study. Morgan Stanley analysts predict Crestor revenue could rise to as much as $8 billion and 18% of the global statin market in 2014. But Timothy Anderson of Sanford C. Bernstein says that physician adoption of the data could be tempered by questions over the safety of aggressive long-term treatment of patients with normal cholesterol.

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