Total cholesterol and all-cause mortality – a study among 13M adults

Re:Total cholesterol and all-cause mortality – a study among... by YeGoblynQueenne on Sunday June 09, 2019 @09:48AM (#20139159)

Well, the study in the posted article examined Total Cholesterol (TC), not LDL, and the conflicting results you say were found in different studies were all about LDL, which suggests there really is some involvement of LDL in CVD. I wonder whether you might have misinterpreted these studies as conflicting when they are merely complementary in nature.

Additionally, I think you will not find many studies that claim that high HDL is bad for you, whereas you will find many that claim it's good (because it protects from CVD). I can't say I see much of "a mess" here- just ordinary, progressing scientific understanding of a complex system.

Are there really any studies that attribute atherosclerosis to bacteria, or some of the other conditions you describe? If so- are there many of those and are they good quality studies? I am very skeptical of your comment's suggestion that the immune system may be involved in atherosclerosis.

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Re:Total cholesterol and all-cause mortality – a study among... by virtuallynathan on Sunday June 09, 2019 @11:45AM (#20139906)

My comment is more general, not specifically in response to the specifics of the article on TC. FWIW, TC is probably not a great measure on an individual basis, but sort of interesting population-wide.

Yes, folks agree high HDL is good, high LDL is bad. However, drug trials to raise HDL didn't work so well.

> "Are there really any studies that attribute atherosclerosis to bacteria, or some of the other conditions you describe?"

Yes! Many!

- "Accelerated Atherosclerosis in Autoimmune Rheumatic Diseases" https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA....

- "Deposition and hydrolysis of serine dipeptide lipids of Bacteroidetes bacteria in human arteries: relationship to atherosclerosis"

- "The immune system in atherosclerosis" https://www.nature.com/articles/ni.2001

- "Is atherosclerosis an autoimmune disease?" https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1741-...

- "Atherosclerosis and the role of immune cells" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4391004/

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Re:Total cholesterol and all-cause mortality – a study among... by Gibbon1 on Sunday June 09, 2019 @08:10PM (#20142767)

> TC is probably not a great measure on an individual basis, but sort of interesting population-wide.

I keep getting the impression that using TC as a guide the ratio of number needed to treat vs morbidity reduced is kinda dismal.

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Re:Total cholesterol and all-cause mortality – a study among... by YeGoblynQueenne on Sunday June 09, 2019 @12:31PM (#20140154)

Thank you for the links. My understanding is also that TC is not a very good predictor of cardiovascular health, but I'm not any kind of expert on the matter, or even close.

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