Welchol is not a statin and does not have a huge effect like a statin does. The statins, of course have serious side effects. My article here on "Statin Rage," the 35 or so comments, and the comprehensive "Review of Statin Effects" in the American Journal of Cardiovascular Drugs last year amply document that fact.

Welchol reduces LDL cholesterol about 16 percent, Dr. Handlesman told me. Welchol is in the family of drugs known as bile acid sequestrants. It sequesters -- attaches -- bile acids, which are made from a lot of cholesterol, Dr. Handelsman explained, and takes them out of our bodies. "Otherwise, when the bile acids finish their job on food they are 95 percent reabsorbed by the body to recirculate -- using the same cholesterol."

Other bile acid sequentrants like Questran weren't popular with patients, because you needed to take something like 20 grams a day. "They are a very untasty terrible power, almost like a detergent," he says. But the company that developed Welchol made it far more efficient and by far more convenient to use, so we need only about 3.5 grams per day.

That company is Tokyo-based Daiichi Sankyo, established in 2005 from the merger of two leading Japanese pharmaceutical companies. The U.S. subsidiary, Daiichi Sankyo Inc., headquartered in Parsippany, New Jersey, markets Welchol here.

So why has Welchol been so little known in the diabetes community until now?

Daiichi Sankyo is "too quiet," Dr. Handelsman concluded. "Maybe they didn't have a good PR firm," he added with a grin. As we talked, a representative of the company's new PR firm, WeissComm Partners in New York, was listening quietly.

WeissComm Partners set up the interview, and I know that from now on we will be hearing a lot about Welchol and its ability to control both blood glucose and LDL cholesterol.