AstraZeneca Presents New Data for CRESTOR(R) in African-American Patients with High Cholesterol at American Heart Association Annual Meeting - First-ever Large-scale, Prospective Study in African Americans with High Cholesterol Levels Demonstrates CRESTOR Helped Patients Achieve Cholesterol Goals - NEW ORLEANS, Nov. 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- New data presented today at the American Heart Association's Annual Scientific Sessions showed that AstraZeneca's CRESTOR(R) (rosuvastatin calcium) at 10 and 20 mg reduced LDL-C or "bad" cholesterol by 37 and 46 percent, compared to 32 and 39 percent at similar doses with atorvastatin in African-American patients. CRESTOR also brought more patients in this study to National Cholesterol Education Program Adult Treatment Panel III (ATP III) LDL-C goals than atorvastatin at milligram-equivalent doses of 10 and 20 mg. ARIES (African American Rosuvastatin Investigation of Efficacy and Safety) is the first-ever large-scale, prospective trial exclusively designed to compare the effects of statins in African-American patients, who have generally been underrepresented in clinical trials. "As an African American physician who treats a large number of African-American patients, the ARIES trial represents an opportunity to demonstrate the efficacy and safety of statins in this high-risk, undertreated and underserved population," said Dr. Keith C. Ferdinand, clinical cardiologist and medical director of Heartbeats Life Center and the lead investigator for ARIES. "ARIES is the first trial to demonstrate superiority in lowering LDL-cholesterol (bad cholesterol) in this population using rosuvastatin (CRESTOR) compared to atorvastatin, comparing equal doses of each." ARIES is a six-week, randomized, controlled, open-label, multi-center trial designed to evaluate the efficacy of CRESTOR and atorvastatin in African Americans with elevated cholesterol. After a six-week dietary lead-in, 774 African-American adults with hypercholesterolemia were randomized to one of four open-label treatments for six weeks: CRESTOR 10 or 20 mg or atorvastatin 10 or 20 mg. Results showed CRESTOR 10 and 20 mg reduced LDL-C by 37 and 46 percent respectively compared with 32 and 39 percent for atorvastatin at the same dosages (p