In Brief: Cholesterol and heart disease
This article was originally published in The Tan Sheet
Executive Summary
Cholesterol and heart disease: Twenty-five-year follow-up of the Seven Countries Study finds that while the relative increase in heart disease mortality rates with a "given cholesterol increase is the same," the "large difference in absolute [heart disease] mortality rates at a given cholesterol level" indicates that "other factors such as diet" also are "important with respect to primary prevention." W.M. Monique Verschuren, MSc, et al. wrote in the July 12 Journal of the American Medical Association that the Mediterranean and Japanese diets, which are high in antioxidants and low in saturated fats, for example, "may have beneficial effects both on the oxidizability of LDL particles and on thrombogenesis, apart from an effect on LDL levels per se"...