Ouch! More Low LDL Cholesterol to “Die For”
Here's one you probably won't find reported far & wide:
Low admission LDL-cholesterol is associated with increased 3-year all-cause mortality in patients with non ST segment elevation myocardial infarction.
After 3 years, patients with admission LDL <= 105 mg/dL had higher all-cause mortality rate compared to patients with LDL > 105 mg/dL (14.8% vs. 7.1%, p = 0.005). The higher all-cause mortality persisted (OR 1.8, 95% CI 1.0-3.5, p = 0.05) even after adjustment for confounding variables. CONCLUSIONS: In our cohort, lower LDL-cholesterol at admission was associated with decreased 3-year survival in patients with NSTEMI. Whether this was a result of current therapy or a marker for worse baseline characteristics needs to be studied further.
The bottom line? The body count for 517 patients with heart problems over three years was twice for the low LDL cholesterol as the for "high" LDL cholesterol people.
Peter the UK veterinarian has observations.
My take home message is that having a low LDL cholesterol, as guesstimated by your cardiologist using the Friedwald equation, is very bad news if you have just had a heart attack.
This is really just a quick hit to call attention to Peter's analysis, so go have a close look.
More reading:
What Do You Think You Know About LDL Cholesterol? (Part One)
What Do You Think You Know About LDL Cholesterol? (Pt 2 of 2)
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How. Dare. You.
You, you, cholesterol deniers!
:)