Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Shionogi & Co. rose in Tokyo trading after a study showed its Crestor cholesterol pill cut the risk of heart attacks in people with low cholesterol, potentially expanding uses for the product.

Shionogi climbed 10 percent to 2,045 yen on the Tokyo Stock Exchange today, after gaining as much as 272 yen, or 15 percent, to 2,125 yen, its steepest intraday advance since Sept. 17, 1991.

Crestor slashed the risk of heart attack, stroke, and death by nearly half in people with normal or low cholesterol in a study presented yesterday to the American Heart Association. AstraZeneca Plc, which sells the drug outside Japan and funded the study, said it will request U.S. approval to expand marketing the product beyond its current use as a cholesterol medicine.

``The study will be huge supporting material to promote Crestor,'' said Yasuhiro Nakazawa, a Tokyo-based drug analyst at Mitsubishi UFJ Securities Co., by telephone. ``It probably appealed to doctors, since the study was presented at the late- breaking session of a prestigious scientific meeting.'' Nakazawa, who says global Crestor sales may reach a peak of $6 billion a year, rates the stock ``outperform.''

The benefits were shown in patients with high levels of a protein called CRP, an indicator of inflammation. CRP is tied to heart risk even in people without other symptoms. Crestor is currently approved by U.S. regulators only to lower bad cholesterol.

Bigger Market

The findings, presented yesterday at a meeting in New Orleans, may help AstraZeneca to double Crestor's yearly sales to $6.33 billion by 2015, expand the $34 billion market for all cholesterol-lowering medicine and prevent 50,000 heart complications a year, analysts and doctors said. The results suggest an additional 6 million men over age 50 and woman over age 60, the group studied, should take the drugs, doctors said.

``Half of heart attacks and strokes happen among apparently healthy men and women with normal or even low levels of cholesterol,'' said Paul Ridker, the lead investigator from Harvard Medical School in Boston. ``We as physicians simply cannot assume our patients are at low risk just because they have low cholesterol.''

AstraZeneca, the U.K.'s second-largest drugmaker, has soared 43 percent in London trading since the study was halted at the end of March amid anticipation of the results. Steven Scala, an analyst at Cowen & Co. in Boston, said in an Oct. 29 note that Crestor sales, an estimated $3.45 billion in 2008, may almost double on the CRP indication.

In the Crestor study, dubbed Jupiter, patients on the drug were 47 percent less likely to have a heart attack, stroke or die of cardiac causes after two years than those using a placebo. As many as 32 million people who don't currently qualify for cholesterol-lowering therapy have elevated CRP levels, the company said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Kanoko Matsuyama in Tokyo at kmatsuyama2@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 10, 2008 01:47 EST