Higher cholesterol raises risk of fatal heart attacks

November 30, 2007

A small lowering of cholesterol leads to a significant reduction in the risk of heart attack, a study by Oxford University researchers has confirmed.

Researchers in the Clinical Trial Service Unit found that lowering cholesterol by 1 millimole per litre (mmol/L) – an easily achievable difference – led to a 56 per cent drop in deaths from ischaemic heart disease (the type of heart disease that usually causes attacks) in the 40–49 age group. This mortality drop was 34 per cent in the 50–69 age group and 17 per cent in the 70–89 age group.

The drops in risk were seen throughout the main range of cholesterol in most developed countries – in other words, whatever your level of blood cholesterol, even normal or low, reducing it still reduces the risk of heart attack.

The Prospective Studies Collaboration reanalysed information from 61 existing prospective observational studies, mostly in Western Europe and America, involving almost 900,000 adults without previous ischaemic heart disease. The findings are published in The Lancet.

The researchers were puzzled, however, by their findings on the relation between stroke and cholesterol. Both stroke and ischaemic heart disease are vascular events, in other words, related to blood vessels, so both would be expected to occur less with lower cholesterol.

Indeed, there is extremely good evidence, much of it from Oxford studies, that statins – which lower cholesterol – lower the risk of both heart attack and stroke. However, this study did not find a clear association with stroke – in fact, at older ages (ie 70–89 years), particularly for those with high blood pressure, higher cholesterol was associated with somewhat lower stroke mortality.

‘We cannot explain this surprising finding’, says Dr Lewington, ‘but irrespective of the explanation, treatment should be guided principally by the definitive evidence from trials that statins substantially reduce strokes and heart attacks, in patients with a wide range of ages and blood pressures. In other words, don’t stop taking the statins.’

Source: Oxford University

3.6 /5 (5 votes)  

Filter


Move the slider to adjust rank threshold, so that you can hide some of the comments.


Display comments: newest first

Knightraptor
Nov 30, 2007

Rank: not rated yet
Slow news day?
Rank 3.6 /5 (5 votes)
Tags

Relevant PhysicsForums posts
  • Is Everyday Technology Killing Us?
    createdFeb 08, 2012
  • Exercise and weight loss
    createdFeb 08, 2012
  • Why do we have head aches? Our brains can't feel anything.
    createdFeb 07, 2012
  • "The end of diseases" by David Agus, interview from Daily Show with Jon Stewart
    createdFeb 04, 2012
  • Oncolytic adenovirus
    createdFeb 04, 2012
  • Nutrition label stuffs and diets
    createdFeb 02, 2012
  • More from Physics Forums - Medical Sciences

More news stories

Complex wiring of the nervous system may rely on a just a handful of genes and proteins

Researchers at the Salk Institute have discovered a startling feature of early brain development that helps to explain how complex neuron wiring patterns are programmed using just a handful of critical genes. ...

Medicine & Health / Research

created 10 hours ago | popularity 4.9 / 5 (9) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

Team isolates nerve cells involved in storing long term memory and gene proteins associated with them

(Medical Xpress) -- A research team in Taiwan has succeeded in isolating two nerve cells in fruit fly brains that are believed to be the major players in allowing for the formation of long term memories. Furthermore, ...

Medicine & Health / Neuroscience

created 16 hours ago | popularity 5 / 5 (4) | comments 2 | with audio podcast report

Seeing colors in music, tasting flavors in shapes may happen in life's early months

Famed violinist Itzhak Perlman sees a deep forest green whenever he plays a B-flat on his Stradivarius' G string. The A on the E string is red.

Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry

created 17 hours ago | popularity 4.5 / 5 (2) | comments 2 | with audio podcast

Both maternal and paternal age linked to autism

Older maternal and paternal age are jointly associated with having a child with autism, according to a recently published study led by researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth).

Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry

created 14 hours ago | popularity 4.3 / 5 (3) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

New understanding of DNA repair could eventually lead to cancer therapy

A research group in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry at the University of Alberta is hoping its latest discovery could one day be used to develop new therapies that target certain types of cancers.

Medicine & Health / Cancer

created 14 hours ago | popularity 4.8 / 5 (6) | comments 0 | with audio podcast


Anonymous knocks CIA website offline (Update)

The website of the Central Intelligence Agency was inaccessible on Friday after the hacker group Anonymous claimed to have knocked it offline.

Google users warned of threat to smartphone wallets

Users of Google smartphone wallets were being warned on Friday that there is a way to crack pass codes intended to thwart thieves from going on illicit shopping sprees.

New error-correcting codes guarantee the fastest possible rate of data transmission

Error-correcting codes are one of the triumphs of the digital age. They’re a way of encoding information so that it can be transmitted across a communication channel — such as an optical fiber o ...

Humans may have helped the decline of African rainforests 3000 years ago

(PhysOrg.com) -- Large areas of rainforests in Central Africa mysteriously disappeared over three thousand years ago, to be replaced by savannas. The prevailing theory has been that the cause was a change ...

New power source discovered

(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and RMIT University have made a breakthrough in energy storage and power generation.

Small modular reactor design could be a 'SUPERSTAR'

(PhysOrg.com) -- Though most of today's nuclear reactors are cooled by water, we've long known that there are alternatives; in fact, the world's first nuclear-powered electricity in 1951 came from a reactor ...