Just when it seemed Vytorin was getting back on track, results of a study showing that patients taking the cholesterol-fighter had more cancers than those taking a placebo surprised everyone last month.

Merck and Schering-Plough, which jointly market the medicine, delayed their second-quarter earnings announcements so that scientists involved in analyzing the study could present the information publicly. They concluded that Vytorin doesn’t really increase cancer risk. Not everyone is so sure, including Rep. John Dingell, who asked to see how the researchers decided that Vytorin was safe.

Investors fretted that even though the cancer data weren’t that scary to the scientists, the public might be alarmed by press coverage of the complex issue. Sanford Bernstein’s Tim Anderson explained the immediate drop in the companies’ stock prices as investors worrying “about how press headlines about the cancer finding might impact prescribing trends.”

Our colleagues at Dow Jones Insight, who track press coverage, took a look at Vytorin mentions over the last year. There was a huge spike in coverage of Vytorin to 512 stories during the week starting July 21. But, as the chart at right shows, the attention was short-lived, and even at its peak the coverage was less intense than the jump at the end of March when disappointing data from the Enhance trial were presented at a meeting of the American College of Cardiology.

New prescriptions for Vytorin in the US have held steady at more than 80,000 a week over the last month, according to data from Wolters Kluwer Health. And investors seem to have recovered from the initial shock. After falling to a low of $17.95 the day after the cancer data were released, Schering-Plough shares closed at $20.46 today. Merck hit a low of $31.15 the day after the came out, and closed at $34.94 today.