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Medicine Science

Reducing Cholesterol Lowers Risk of Heart Attack, Stroke, and Death, Study Finds (usatoday.com) 65

Posted by EditorDavid from the keeps-the-doctor-away dept.
An anonymous reader shared this report from USA Today: A new study reinforces the importance of lowering cholesterol in people at risk for, but who haven't had a heart attack or stroke. The study looked at a statin alternative, called bempedoic acid, and found that as it reduced levels of LDL cholesterol, it also lowered the risk for heart attack, stroke and death.

Researchers are quick to say bempedoic acid shouldn't be used instead of statins. It's far more expensive and doesn't have the decades-long track record of safety and effectiveness. But for people who can't tolerate statins or a high enough dose to bring their cholesterol levels down adequately, the new study suggests it's important to find alternatives, and that bempedoic acid can be at least part of the solution.
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Reducing Cholesterol Lowers Risk of Heart Attack, Stroke, and Death, Study Finds More

Reducing Cholesterol Lowers Risk of Heart Attack, Stroke, and Death, Study Finds

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  • In other news, water is wet.
  • Actually I think there have been a few studies about this already.

  • Stop eating sugar like a fiend and your triglycerides will to down so your small LDL will go down and your lumen health will improve. Add some K2MK7 and your hypertension may go down too.

    The Number Needed to Treat on statins is huge and the risk number is lower.

    Or eat ding-dongs and pop pills - you are what you eat.

  • Lower the risk of death? (Score:3)

    by pierceelevated ( 5484374 ) on Sunday June 25, 2023 @11:40AM (#63631066)

    I thought that was pretty much a given.

  • I can guarantee everyone reading this still has 100% chance of death...
  • Yes, the 80s is calling. The second half of the article says (oh yeah I did) take it with a grain of salt and some other stuff about statins, so this is about cholesterol you already have in your tubes. Also, it's not about eating cholesterol. The fancy word they use is Dietary, that's when it's in your food and anything with a cell wall will have it. Limit your diet to your own desires and moderation (if you think that that's a thing) and feel free to talk about whatever, because this is essentially and ad

  • Your liver (Score:4, Informative)

    by istartedi ( 132515 ) on Sunday June 25, 2023 @12:08PM (#63631128) Journal

    Since most cholesterol is made in the liver [healthline.com], I wonder why they don't study that more. Sure, you can lower cholesterol with a drug... which the liver has to process too, so how do we know that long term we aren't just creating a physical addiction to the cholesterol lowering drug, which will fail to treat the underlying liver problems and ultimately come back to bite us?

    The statin class of drugs were originally isolated from Chinese herbal medicine (seriously, look it up) and herbalists didn't keep their patients on it long term AFAIK--they'd diagnose "cold" or a Chi imbalance or something, and mix it up in their tea for a while until they thought the patient was doing better.

    That's not scientific of course, but a lot of things in medicine were and still are more of an art; but I digress.

    Most cholesterol is made in the liver, and we should probably study liver health as much as diet, which may lead us back to things in the diet that are damaging the liver and I bet that's not eating fatty food. There's a growing pile of evidence it's the damned sugar, which was never in our diets to this degree until modern times; but alcohol and diseases, some of them STDs seem to be implicated in what I've linked above.

    Disclaimer: Not a doctor. I just play one on the Internet.

  • I can't take statins - feel like I've been beaten with a baseball bat on 'em. Just no tolerating then for me.

    Instead I've had good success with each of two PCSK9 inhibitors, both of which are biweekly self-injectables. No muss, no fuss, works great. Just expensive as fuck.

    Looking forward to bempedoic acid becoming more affordable. Given the cost of either of my two monoclonal antibodies, it might already be cheaper.

  • Inflammatory diet (Score:3)

    by Nocturrne ( 912399 ) on Sunday June 25, 2023 @12:44PM (#63631214)

    Blood serum cholesterol is produced by your body, not from the food you eat. High cholesterol is your body's response to inflammation. One of the biggest causes of inflammation is high insulin levels from a high carb and high processed food diet. For decades, people have been brainwashed by the junk food industry, into believing fat is bad for you, when it is the high carb junk that is destroying everyone's health.

    • Hallelujah!

      25 years ago the WHO retracted " high cholesterol does not correlate with high dietary cholesterol".

      But why am I surprised? People updating their beliefs and/or rationale throughout their lives? Hahahahaha. Scientists don't do that let alone the general public.

      After all, people obviously do not understand second derivatives (I thought that speed and acceleration are understood by most). How else we'd have 85 percent of westerners saying there's a population explosion going on whereas the opposite

  • ... but I know as a FACT that exercise has the same effect - PROVE ME WRONG!

  • The medical establishment has been saying this since the 1970s. I can still remember my father pouring liquid cholesterol fee egg substitute out of a tiny milk carton into a frying pan.

    I guess studies like these are still necessary due to misinformation spread on the Internet.

    Here is a clue for anyone who lost a lot of weight in the first 2 weeks of a wacky diet and then found "religion" about that way of eating:

    Carbohydrates bound with water are stored in your muscles. It is called glycogen.

    When

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • No mention anywhere that this study was funded by Esperion Therapeutics - the company that manufactures the drug. Hm? There's also studies that show people with higher LDL live longer than thoses with lower LDL. There's also studies that show heart disease is primarily driven by hyperinsulinemia. There's also a thing called an advanced lipid panel, which is far more informative than a simple blood test that shows you total LDL with a lipoprotein size breakdown. Just because you have normal range total LDL t

    • No mention anywhere that this study was funded by Esperion Therapeutics - the company that manufactures the drug. Hm? There's also studies that show people with higher LDL live longer than thoses with lower LDL.

      [citation needed]

      There's also studies that show heart disease is primarily driven by hyperinsulinemia.

      [citation needed]

      There's also a thing called an advanced lipid panel, which is far more informative than a simple blood test that shows you total LDL with a lipoprotein size breakdown. Just because you have normal range total LDL tells you nothing about the size breakdown or if athereosclerosis or LDL having a high residence rate.

      For 99% of cases it correlates perfectly. Oh yes, of course, you're the special snowflake, and your doc is too stupid to see it.

      The ignorance since the 1950s on heart disease and the war on fats just continues to full steam these days and shows in the posting of this story.

      LDL and other ApoB carrying particles are *causally* related to heart disease, and there is no doubt about that. If your keto diet lowers your LDLc (heck, it does for me!) then, sure, go ahead, but if you're one of those people for whom keto makes LDLc skyrocket, then you need to stop following your damn religion, screaming "lean mass hyperresponde

  • As with any statistical result it is important to remember that it provides information about the population, not any individual member. What the data shows at best is that some people in the population benefited from the treatment. My understanding is there is some evidence that high blood cholesterol is a marker for heart disease rather than its cause. This includes at least one drug that showed great promise since it reduced cholesterol, but studies showed it had no effect on heart attacks. I think th
  • ...Already know this? Thanks for the confirmation, though? Guess I'll have to keep reading Quanta to find interesting science news.

  • We already knew this. This has already been studied. We already knew reducing cholesterol counts reduced heart disease. It's not a surprise. Any other ways I can say it?

    What we don't know is why, because reducing cholesterol intake does not have the same results. THAT would be news. This is not.

  • Your chance of death is 100%.

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