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Wednesday, August 15, 2007Vasan's team followed more than 3,300 middle-aged participants in the Framingham Offspring Study, a major study launched in 1971. Cholesterol measurements were taken in the years 1987 to 1991, when the men and women were free of heart disease. After a follow-up of about 15 years, 291 participants, including 198 men, developed heart disease. Measurements of the apo B to apo A-I ratio were compared with measuring the total cholesterol to HDL ratio to see how well each approach predicted the participants' heart disease. The researchers concluded that the total cholesterol-to-HDL ratio was sufficient and that the other ratio does not substantially improve the accuracy of the prediction. Apo-B and Apo-A are subsets of cholesterol that have been touted as better markers for heart risk than the conventional good (HDL) and bad (LDL) cholesterols. Time to rethink that position. In other news, it turns out that there's little to no evidence that increasing levels of good cholesterol reduces the risk of heart disease: With 40% of all heart attacks and related cardiovascular problems occurring in people who have low levels of so-called "good" cholesterol, researchers have long sought medications to increase the amount of this type of cholesterol in the body's circulation. But a new review of 31 randomized controlled trials published in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that so far, only modest evidence supports the use of most medications to raise levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) -- good cholesterol. Some are even harmful. Moral of the story: When obsessing over your cholesterol, concentrate on the LDL (bad cholesterol) value. posted by Sydney on 8/15/2007 12:51:00 PM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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