Footnotes

• Contributors MLJ, SP and CJM designed the study and prepared the letter. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.

• Funding This work was supported by Micropharma Limited.

• Competing interests MLJ and SP acknowledge a conflict of interest as they are cofounders and shareholders of Micropharma. CJM is employed by, and is a shareholder of, Micropharma.

• Patient consent Obtained.

• Ethics approval The study was conducted according to the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. Otherwise healthy hypercholesterolemic adults were recruited from six centres in Prague, Czech Republic. The protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee for multicentric clinical trials of the University Hospital Motol, Czech Republic (FDA/OHRP IORG registration no. IORG0000612). The trial was registered on www.clinicaltrials.gov under study number NCT01341613.

• Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.