On November 24, CEO Fred Hassan Said Vytorin/Zetia Sales Were "Stabilizing" -- Um. Not. -- Off 10 percent in November!

Here is a link to the Schering R & D Webcast live-blog, at which Fred Hassan said he saw sales of Vytorin/Zetia "stabilizing", and that the company was putting that problem behind it.

Actually, though, it turns out that sales were contracting, and at an accelerating pace, in November 2008 -- in a now quickly-shrinking overall US market-place for cholesterol management drugs.

Yep. Here is today's SEC-filed Form 8-K -- detailing actual IMS scrip data for November 2008: Down another 10 percent!

Gee -- "Yer' doin' a heckuva' Job, there, Freddie!" -- to modify a quote of our outgoing Commander in Chief. . . .

And, a snippet from the Reuters wires:

. . . .Schering-Plough says in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that sales of Zetia were down almost 9 percent from October to November. Sales of Vytorin, which combines Zetia and Merck's older, now-generic cholesterol drug Zocor, are down 10 percent. . . .

Prescriptions of Vytorin and Zetia fell from 2.19 million to 1.98 million in November, the first time monthly prescriptions of the cholesterol franchise have fallen below 2 million this year, Schering-Plough said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commision.

It cited statistics from IMS Health, a widely used pharmaceutical information firm.

The monthly decline for Zetia and Vytorin was steeper than the 6.3 percent decline for the overall cholesterol market, said Schering-Plough, which co-markets the drugs with Merck.

Merck earlier this month said it expects combined sales of Vytorin and Zetia to fall in 2009, due to flagging U.S. demand for the products. . . .

Said another way, Schering's joint venture continues to lose share, in a shrinking United States market. In October, the Vytorin/Zetia franchise held about 10.6 percent US share -- in a month, that has delcined to 10.27 percent. Ominous -- a four-point drop -- in a month. So, almost a year after the world first began to learn that "something was amiss" with ENHANCE -- US market share is still declining -- and that decline looks to be acclerating, once again.