Crestor Cholesterol Drug Gets a Boost

In the competitive field of cholesterol drugs, AstraZeneca Plc's Crestor just moved ahead.

The British drugmaker got the green light from U.S. officials to market Crestor to people who don't have high cholesterol but are at risk for heart attacks or stroke.

The approval for expanded use has the potential to add millions of new patients to a drug that had $4.5 billion in sales last year. That annual revenue figure was a 29 percent increase from a year earlier. More importantly, the third-largest drug for AstraZeneca is the only blockbuster that had sales growth last year.

Getting the Food and Drug Administration nod gives Crestor a leg up over rivals too. It's now the only statin (a class of drugs that includes Pfizer Inc.'s Lipitor and Merck & Co.'s Zocor). Lipitor is the world's top-selling prescription drug with more than $11 billion in sales last year (an 8 percent decline).

AstraZeneca could be poised to take advantage when Lipitor's patent expires next year. But it will have to get past a court challenge from generic drug companies that say Crestor's own patent protection should end before 2016. A trial in that case is set to begin later this month in Delaware.