Not all cholesterol-lowering medications
are the same.

How LIPITOR Compares

Not all cholesterol-lowering medications are the same. As you and your doctor work to decide what option may be best for you, consider how LIPITOR compares:

LIPITOR is the #1 prescribed branded medication in the world*

  • Over 29 million people in the United States have been prescribed LIPITOR

Unlike some other cholesterol-lowering medications, LIPITOR is FDA-approved to significantly reduce the risk of:

  • Heart attack
  • Stroke
  • Certain kinds of heart surgeries
  • Chest pain

if you have several common risk factors, including high blood pressure, low HDL ("good" cholesterol), family history, smoking, and age.

Five times more physicians surveyed would recommend LIPITOR to their own family members over other cholesterol-lowering medications.

LIPITOR is one of the most widely studied medicines in the world—with more than 15 years of research.

  • Over 400 ongoing and completed clinical studies—which included over 80,000 patients§

LIPITOR has a proven safety record.

Only LIPITOR is LIPITOR
Not every brand-name medication has an approved generic form. While there are generic versions of other cholesterol medications, there is no approved generic form of LIPITOR.

In clinical studies, LIPITOR lowered bad cholesterol significantly more than generic Zocor (simvastatin).||¶

  • LIPITOR is proven to lower LDL ("bad" cholesterol) 76 to 115 points, or 39%-60% (average effect depending on dose)

Zocor is a registered trademark of Merck & Co, Inc.

*IMS Health. IMS National Prescription Audit Plus. March 2006.
Total Patient Tracker, Verispan, LLC, April 2008.
Results are based on a blinded, national, random survey of 493 physicians representative of the AMA master file, conducted by Harris Interactive Inc. April-June 2007.
§Data on file. Pfizer Inc, New York, NY.
||The CURVES study was conducted in 1997 to evaluate the comparative effectiveness of varying doses of LIPITOR with equivalent dose strengths of Zocor® (simvastatin), Pravachol® (pravastatin), and lovastatin over 8 weeks. The CURVES study involved 534 patients and demonstrated that LIPITOR at 10, 20, and 40 mg produced significantly greater reductions in LDL cholesterol than the milligram-equivalent of Zocor®, Pravachol®, and lovastatin.
The CHALLENGE study was conducted to evaluate the comparative efficacy and safety of LIPITOR at 10 mg vs Zocor (simvastatin) at 20 mg and of LIPITOR at 80 mg vs Zocor at 80 mg over 6 weeks. The CHALLENGE study involved 1732 patients with high cholesterol and demonstrated that LIPITOR produced significantly greater reductions in LDL cholesterol than Zocor (simvastatin).