Sunday, August 4, 2013

Will LDL cholesterol ( the bad cholesterol) gain a new reputation?

Based on this article, scientist attempted to address what came first: Cancer or Low serum LDL levels?  Apparently, it is already established that they exist coincidentally at time of cancer diagnosis.

An excerpt from Low Levels of LDL Cholesterol Predate Cancer Cases by Nearly Two Decades. Medscape. Mar 25, 2012:

"The question we wanted to address is whether low cholesterol happens when the cancer is already there or is it there before the cancer develops," lead investigator Dr Paul Michael Lavigne (Tufts Medical Center, Boston, MA) told heartwire . "Based on these data, it would suggest that lower cholesterol predated the development of cancer by quite a long time. Now, that doesn't necessarily speak to [low cholesterol] causing the cancer; it could have been related to something else altogether, but it's not supportive of the hypothesis that cancer caused the low levels of LDL cholesterol. We don't know why it predates cancer, but it would be premature to attribute it to the cancer itself."

And this does not mean that statins are dangerous:
"Lavigne noted that their analysis excluded statin-treated patients and that "there is nothing here to suggest that statins would be unsafe." He added that the study was not designed to address any potential mechanisms. "You can hypothesize that lipids are involved in various processes, including immune function or inflammation, or some prospective mechanism that causes cancer also alters lipid metabolism, but those would really just be hypotheses that weren't addressed in our study."

I personally believe that humans will eventually understand LDL's positively, meaningful, health supporting function(s) and re-define its reputation in medicine.  Perhaps, physicians will say something other than, "... this is your bad cholesterol, this is what we want to go down."