Panel recommends Merck & Co continue cholesterol drug study

(Reuters) - Merck & Co said an independent data monitoring committee recommended that the drugmaker continue a study of its experimental cholesterol drug, anacetrapib. The recommendation comes a month after Eli Lilly & Co stopped testing a similar cholesterol drug, belonging to a class of drugs called CETP inhibitors. Merck said on Friday that the committee reviewed safety and efficacy data from the large study, including a futility analysis. A futility analysis is done to gauge if a study is likely to succeed or fail. Merck is now the only major drugmaker still aggressively developing a CETP inhibitor - drugs aimed at raising HDL, or "good cholesterol" levels in the blood and cutting levels of LDL, or "bad cholesterol". Lilly stopped testing the drug for cholesterol due to low likelihood of it meeting the main goal of the study. In 2006, Pfizer Inc also scrapped a study on a similar drug, after the treatment was linked to higher death rates. Merck's shares were little changed at $53 in premarket trading on Friday. (Reporting by Vidya L Nathan in Bengaluru; Editing by Kirti Pandey)