French researchers followed a large group of men and women aged 65 and older for seven years. They found that depression in women was associated with low levels of “good” high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), which puts them at higher risk for cardiovascular disease, including stroke.

Previous research has shown that certain types of stroke increase the risk of depression.

In contrast, depression in men was linked with low levels of “bad” low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C). This association was strongest in men with a genetic vulnerability to depression related to a serotonin transporter gene.

The study appears in the July 15 issue of the journal Biological Psychiatry.

“Our results suggest that clinical management of abnormal lipid levels may reduce depression in the elderly, but different treatment will be required according to sex,” corresponding author Dr. Marie-Laure Ancelin, of INSERM, Montpellier, France, said in a journal news release.

“LDL-C serum level seems to be an important biological marker in men, with a narrow range for normal functioning. Above this range, cardio- or cerebro-vascular risk increases, and below it, there is increased risk of depression,” she added.

Therefore, proper regulation of HDL-C and LDL-C levels may help prevent depression in the elderly, the researchers concluded.

Technorati Tags: cholesterol levels, prevent depression, reduce depression

In a report published in the journal Pediatrics, they call for screening of all children, expanding one set of current recommendations that target only those whose parents or grandparents have heart disease or high cholesterol. Another existing set of guidelines doesn’t call for screening in any children.

Screening all children would “identify a number of children who are of very significant risk of premature heart disease,” said Dr. William Neal of West Virginia University in Morgantown, who led the new study.

Neal said treating youth with cholesterol-lowering drugs, the so-called statins, would curb the risk that they went on to develop heart problems in middle age. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the Western world.

Based on data from West Virginia, Neal and colleagues found that more than one percent of all fifth-graders had cholesterol levels that warranted drug treatment. But a third of those children didn’t have relatives with heart disease or high cholesterol, and so wouldn’t have been screened under the current guidelines, issued by the government’s National Cholesterol Education Program.

“I have gradually become convinced that universal screening in children is not only preferable, but necessary,” said Neal. He added that although universal screening would be expensive, it would save a lot of money later on if heart disease could be prevented.

But not all scientists agree that screening is a good idea. For example, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a federal expert panel, currently doesn’t recommend routine cholesterol screening in any children.

“Unfortunately, there is no evidence that starting a ten-year-old on cholesterol-lowering drugs will prevent heart disease 40 years later,” said Dr. Michael L. LeFevre, a member of the task force.

He said statin treatment in children was still controversial, and that no long-term safety data existed.

The new study tapped into data from more than 20,000 children who had been screened at public schools in West Virginia over five years.

More than seven in 10 school kids had first-degree relatives with heart disease, and about one percent of those had “bad” cholesterol (LDL cholesterol) levels that might require drug treatment in addition to diet changes and exercise, according to the researchers.

Yet among the kids without heart disease in their family, the percentage of children who might benefit from treatment was closer to two percent than to one, meaning that family history didn’t seem to make a difference.

“It is therefore prudent to implement universal screening in the pediatric population independent of family history,” the researchers conclude.

SOURCE: http://link.reuters.com/tat96m Pediatrics, online July 12, 2010.

Technorati Tags: cholesterol lowering drugs, cholesterol tests, LDL cholesterol

The approval includes children whose high blood fats are due to an inherited disease that causes extremely high cholesterol levels, familial hypercholesterolemia.

New York-based Pfizer Inc. won U.S. approval for Lipitor use in children 10 to 17 with that condition in 2002.

Lipitor is the world’s top-selling drug, with 2009 sales of about $13 billion, but its U.S. patent expires at the end of November 2011. Pfizer, the world’s biggest drugmaker, will quickly lose most Lipitor revenue once generic competition hits, so the company has been trying to boost sales where possible before then.

Pfizer said last fall that it plans to apply for a six-month extension of its patent in European countries, after doing studies of Lipitor in youngsters.

As in the United States, the European Union allows drug makers to seek an additional six months of patent protection for medications if they test them in children, who generally are excluded from the drug studies performed to win approval for a new medication.

Pfizer already won such an extension for its crucial U.S. patent on Lipitor.

For blockbuster drugs, those extensions can easily bring hundreds of millions of dollars in additional revenue. Normally, they are for drugs that are widely used by different age groups.

Until recently, cholesterol drugs have been primarily taken by adults with heart disease, but their use has expanded to younger patients as more obese, sedentary teenagers and adolescents develop heart disease and diabetes.

Lipitor is approved to lower risk of heart attack and stroke, but can cause dangerous muscle pain or weakness, and it cannot be taken by patients with liver problems or by nursing or pregnant women.

Technorati Tags: Cholesterol drugs, high cholesterol levels, Lipitor, Pfizer

Two new studies published Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine reignite the simmering debate. (See TIME’s special on how to live 100 years.)

One study revisits the merits of the controversial JUPITER trial (or Justification for the Use of Statins in Primary Prevention), which was published in 2008 in the New England Journal of Medicine. That trial concluded that the statin drug Crestor (rosuvastatin) lowered the combined risks of heart attack, stroke, other heart events or heart-related death by 47% in healthy patients with no history of heart problems or high cholesterol, but high levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), a marker for inflammation. The findings prompted the Food and Drug Administration in February to expand the eligible patient population for Crestor by millions.

Critics of the JUPITER trial have contended that the benefits of the cholesterol drug may have been exaggerated because the trial was stopped early - after two years, instead of the planned five. Had the trial been allowed to continue, critics say, the differences in benefit between the treatment and placebo groups may have disappeared. That is the argument raised again by the new study in the Archives, by an international group of scientists led by Dr. Michel de Lorgeril at the University Joseph Fourier and the National Center of Scientific Research in Grenoble, France. (Read “Why Drugs Don’t Help Diabetes Patients’ Hearts.”)

JUPITER was stopped prematurely when an independent monitoring board gleaned an overwhelming treatment benefit in the statin group. Although the early termination of randomized and blinded control studies is common - to ensure the safety of patients, study leaders frequently monitor the accruing data and stop the trial when one group shows a predetermined amount of benefit over the other - in JUPITER’s case, de Lorgeril’s group argues, the study never made clear what the predetermined benefit was.

What the data did show, however, is that when certain hard clinical endpoints - such as heart-related death - were considered, the difference between the two groups was not significant enough to warrant stopping the trial. Among the entire study population of more than 17,000, there was a total of only 240 heart attacks and strokes, a relatively small number; of those, the number of fatal heart attacks and strokes in the statin and placebo groups was equal, at 12 each, suggesting no benefit of the drug. (See “The Year in Health 2009.”)

Still, when other endpoints were taken into consideration, the benefit of Crestor blossomed. Patients taking Crestor had significantly lower rates of nonfatal events: The treatment group showed 65% fewer nonfatal heart attacks compared with people taking placebo and a 48% lower rate of nonfatal stroke. Although a reduction in nonfatal cardiovascular events is important, and certainly desirable, heart experts argue that the true measure of a therapy is its effectiveness in extending the lives of people with disease.

JUPITER’s principal author, Dr. Paul Ridker, agrees, but explains that because his patient population was healthier and necessarily had a lower rate of heart events compared with patients who are typically recruited for statin studies, JUPITER would have had to continue for an unjustifiably long time in order to document a difference in heart-related death rates. “When a class of drugs is well recognized to reduce nonfatal heart attacks and strokes, then unless something truly unusual is happening, of course it will reduce fatal events, if the you ran the trials long enough,” says Ridker, a cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

De Lorgeril and his co-authors suggest it would have been better to let the trial continue, and find out.

The second paper appearing in the Archives is a review of data from 11 previous randomized controlled trials of statins - including JUPITER - in healthy populations at high risk for heart disease. The study, led by Dr. Kausik Ray, who was then at St. George’s, University of London, found that among more than 65,000 healthy people with no history of heart problems but with traditional risk factors for heart disease, treatment with the cholesterol-lowering medications did not significantly lower the risk of death from any cause over an average four years.

Previous meta-analyses had shown that statins do in fact extend life, but those studies included patients with pre-existing cardiovascular disease - patients whom statins are known to benefit - potentially skewing the results, explains Ray. His current analysis looked only at healthy, high-risk individuals. And given the lack of benefit seen in these patients, Ray cautions against using statins - which carry serious side effects - for the primary prevention of heart disease in lower-risk populations.

Ridker believes such reluctance on the part of scientists to expand statin therapy to a larger patient population is unjustified. He notes that while JUPITER does call for the inclusion of new patients who are not treated under current statin guidelines, it does not support blanket treatment in “lower-risk” patients: JUPITER’s patients did not have the traditional known risk factors for heart disease (high blood pressure and high cholesterol, for instance), but they did have high levels of CRP, which indicates inflammation in the heart vessels. The trial was designed to test the theory that such inflammation could be a novel - and treatable - risk factor for heart attack and stroke that current guidelines do not take into account. He says JUPITER’s results support the theory.

“I agree with the [Archives study] authors’ bottom line, which is what we have always said over and over - the first things to do to prevent heart disease is to eat a proper diet, exercise regularly and stop smoking,” says Ridker. “But what JUPITER clearly shows is that even among people who are thin, who exercise, have low cholesterol and don’t smoke, the risk is high if you have elevated levels of CRP. And being on a statin can lower your risk of having a heart event by half.”

So what does this mean for statin use in healthy individuals? Current guidelines suggest that people whose risk of having a heart event is at least 20% over the next 10 years - calculated by considering traditional risk factors such as a person’s age, high cholesterol, elevated blood pressure and diabetes, but not high CRP - may benefit from taking the drug.

Ray agrees that these high-risk patients should continue using statins, but says the medication should not be extended beyond this group. “If we crop-dusted the entire population and extended the number of people taking statins, we would get even less mortality benefit,” he says. “We are not particularly brilliant in the primary prevention setting in working out who best benefits [from statin use]. We are still not perfect in the way we identify those individuals.”

Ridker agrees that the system isn’t perfect yet, but counters that we now have at least one additional risk factor that can be addressed by a statin - inflammation. He thinks that people with high CRP should be considered for statin therapy, even if they don’t show the other traditional heart disease risk factors. “We didn’t simply demonstrate that statins are highly effective in primary prevention,” he says. “We also demonstrated that if you take a population of people who never qualified for a statin before, and who by current guidelines are considered to be at low risk of heart disease, and screen them for CRP, their risk is actually high.”

“One thing to emphasize here is that what we are witnessing now is a statistical tug-of-war,” says Dr. Clyde Yancy, president of the American Heart Association. “The broader message continues to be straightforward. We understand that we have new risk markers, and we should acknowledge that. And we understand that for some persons the current indications for initiating statin therapy are too conservative, and don’t allow us to catch everyone. But in the same breath, we also recognize that giving someone a potentially lifelong therapeutic intervention when they are asymptomatic needs to be respected at the highest order.”

The tension and the confusion over making such treatment decisions, runs deep. In a special article accompanying the two studies in the Archives, Dr. Sanjay Kaul, a cardiologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and colleagues conclude that JUPITER’s findings are likely flawed, and not sufficient to recommend using CRP to guide heart-disease treatment decisions.

Time, and more data, may be the only way to resolve the debate. Already, millions of patients with elevated CRP levels are taking statins, so researchers will inevitably accumulate additional lifetime data on whether the drugs can reduce healthy people’s risk of dying from heart disease.

Technorati Tags: cholesterol lowering drugs, Crestor, high blood pressure, high cholesterol

Previous studies have suggested a link between height and heart problems like angina, heart attacks and angioplasties. This is the first major review of such studies, including research from around the world, confirming the relationship.

Researchers in Finland looked at 52 previous papers with data on height and heart problems in more than 3 million men and women.

Experts did not consider patients’ heights objectively, but within the context of a particular country’s population. They found the shortest people in the population were one and a half times more likely to have heart problems or die from them than the tallest people.

On average, short people were under 161 centimeters (5 feet 3 inches) and tall people were at least 174 centimeters (5 feet 9 inches).

The study was paid for by the Finnish Foundation for Cardiovascular Research and others. It was published online Wednesday in the European Heart Journal.

“We don’t want to scare short people, but perhaps they should be extra cautious about their lifestyle,” said Borge Nordestgaard, a professor of genetic epidemiology at the University of Copenhagen. He was not connected to the study.

Height’s impact on heart disease was still less important than things like smoking, which increases the chance of a heart ailment by up to four times, he said.

Scientists aren’t sure why short people might be more susceptible to heart problems, but think there could be several explanations. Being short might be a result of being poor, meaning people of small stature could be undernourished and vulnerable to health problems in general.

Experts also suggested there could be a biological explanation, such as a hormone imbalance that hurts the heart. Scientists also suspect that because short people have smaller arteries, those could theoretically get clogged quicker with cholesterol and be more easily damaged by any changes in blood pressure.

But Joep Perk, a professor of health sciences at Linnaeus University in Sweden and a spokesman for the European Society of Cardiology, said it was too early to conclude short people had potentially problematic hearts.

“We should be very cautious to tell short people they’re at risk,” he said. “This could unfairly stigmatize them.”

He said it was premature for cardiologists to consider height as a risk factor. “We need to understand the mechanism behind it before we can do anything with this information,” he said. “This is an interesting observation, but I want to know what I can do for my patients.”

Tuula Paajanen, the study’s lead author from Tampere University Hospital in Finland, said short people shouldn’t be alarmed about the findings.

“Height is only one factor (among many) that may contribute to heart disease risk,” she said.

Paajanen recommended people focus on other things like not smoking, eating a balanced diet and exercise. “Those are easier to change than your height.”

Technorati Tags: blood pressure, cholesterol, heart problems, heart problems risk

Such an eating regimen had almost no effect on cholesterol levels, according to a report in the April issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition on the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI), a national trial that gave some women intensive training and education on eating a low-fat diet and compared their health with women who didn’t change their eating habits.

The best that study author Barbara V. Howard, a professor of medicine at Georgetown University, could say for a low-fat diet was that it didn’t make things worse as far as affecting blood levels of good fats, such as HDL cholesterol, and bad fats, such as triglycerides.

“This diet did not raise triglycerides and didn’t lower HDL cholesterol,” Howard said. “It didn’t do any of the adverse things that high-fat people have claimed.”

In addition, women who lowered intake of specific kinds of fats — saturated fats and trans fatty acids — did have lower a lower rate of heart disease, she said.

And eating a low-fat diet might make it easier to lose weight, which is important because of the current American epidemic of obesity, Howard noted.

“If you start out eating too many calories and you cut fat, that automatically makes you eat a higher-carbohydrate diet,” she said. “If a person wants to reduce weight and is comfortable with cutting fat, that is a good strategy.”

Begun in 1991, the WHI was initially designed to determine the effect of a low-fat diet on cancer risk, with heart disease reduction a secondary goal. In 2006, the first results showed there was no effect on cancer risk.

In the trial, women who followed the low-fat regimen consumed 29.3 percent of their calories as fat, compared with 37 percent of those in the comparison group. But the low-fat diet did not affect blood triglyceride, HDL cholesterol or other lipoprotein levels.

“The main message here is that if you want to lose weight and cut fat to do it, you do not have adverse effects,” Howard said. Though the choice of diet can be influenced by many factors, including cultural background, “in my opinion, if you have to cut calories to lose weight, it is easier to cut fat because fat is denser,” she said.

So a recommended diet would “focus on vegetables, grains, healthy products that are not calorie-dense and that can fill you up more easily,” she said.

But Howard’s advice to switch to a high-carbohydrate diet is disputed by Jeff. S. Volek, an associate professor of kinesiology at the University of Connecticut and an expert in the field.

The study “does hint at the fact that people with insulin resistance, as shown by high triglycerides or being diabetic, tend to do worse when carbohydrates are increased,” Volek said. “Decreasing carbohydrates represents the preferred approach for people with insulin resistance.”

In the end, Volek said, “it’s difficult to make any firm conclusions from a study like Women’s Health Initiative because, after years of being prescribed a diet, very few people are actually on the diet.” Self-reports of food intake “are notoriously inaccurate,” he said, and “even though the number of subjects is large, the noise is even greater so that these studies contribute very little to actual knowledge on the interaction of diet and health.”

“There is a distinct difference,” he pointed out, “in studying what happens when you assign a diet vs. what happens when people actually follow a diet.”

Technorati Tags: Alter Cholesterol Levels, HDL cholesterol, lipoprotein, low fat diet

Cholesterol builds up in the walls of your arteries. Over time, this buildup causes “hardening of the arteries” so that arteries become narrowed and blood flow to the heart is slowed down or blocked. You can imagine what that looks like if you think about the pipes under your kitchen sink. As they get clogged with food, grease and hair over time, the drainage of water slows and eventually stops completely. Since blood travels through these arteries, or pipes, to carry oxygen to your muscles, organs and tissues including your heart, a blockage could reduce enough blood and oxygen to your heart that you may suffer chest pain, called angina. If the blood supply to a portion of the heart is completely cut off by a blockage, the result is a heart attack. If this blockage occurs in your brain, the result is a stroke.

High blood cholesterol itself does not cause symptoms; so there are a lot of people that are completely unaware that their cholesterol level is too high. It is important to find out what your cholesterol numbers are because lowering cholesterol levels that are too high lessens the risk for developing heart disease and reduces the chance of a heart attack or stroke. Even if you have already had a heart attack or stroke, lower cholesterol will reduce your chance of having second one. Cholesterol lowering is important for everyone–younger, middle age, and older adults; women and men; and people with or without heart disease.

There are different kinds of cholesterol in your blood that can measured through a simple blood test preformed at your doctor?s office. This blood test must be preformed fasting, which means you can not eat or drink anything but water or black coffee for 8-12 hours before your blood test for them to be accurate.

What is LDL?

LDL (bad) cholesterol is the main source of buildup and blockage in the arteries. The majority of LDL is created by your body in your liver. A smaller percentage of it is absorbed through your diet.  An easy way for patients to remember LDL is the ?bad cholesterol? is to think the L in LDL stands for Lousy cholesterol, or the one you want to Lower.With this form of cholesterol, studies have shown the lower the better.  Babies are born with an LDL of 30-40, so it is hard to lower the LDL too much. Since physicians and various guidelines have different goals for different patients, ask your doctor what your personal goal is for LDL.

What is HDL?

HDL (good) cholesterol helps keep bad cholesterol from building up in the arteries. An easy way for patients to remember this is the good cholesterol is the H in HDL stands for Healthy cholesterol or the one you want to be Higher. Studies show that with this form of cholesterol, the higher the better. If your HDL is below 40, it becomes an additional risk factor for heart disease. If your HDL is above 60, it actually allows you to subtract one of your other risk factors.

What Is Triglicerides?

Triglycerides are another form of fat in your blood which is often high in patients with diabetes, but can be high in anyone. Some patients may only have high triglycerides while all other cholesterol values remain normal. If you have both high triglycerides and high cholesterol, the condition is called ?mixed dyslipidemia?.

What Does Total Cholesterol To HDL Ratio Mean?

Another number that clinical studies have shown to be important in determining your risk of heart disease is the ratio of Total Cholesterol to HDL Cholesterol.  In general, it should be less than 4.0.  Ask your doctor what your value is, and what your specific goal should be. Again this is a number where the lower it is, the better.

The level of your LDL or bad cholesterol along with the number of other risk factors that you may have for developing heart disease will help your doctor decide not only your individual cholesterol goals, but if necessary what your individual treatment will include.Other risk factors for heart disease include age, gender (males), cigarette smoking, high blood pressure, diabetes, HDL levels below 40, and a family history of early heart disease. Even though physical activity (sedentary lifestyle) and obesity are not included on this list, these are conditions that need to be corrected as well.

There are several treatment options for patients depending on individual test results and goals.   All treatments should include a diet designed to lower cholesterol intake and an exercise plan.  Many treatment plans will include dietary supplements and/or prescription medication(s). There are a variety of prescription medications that can target your specific treatment needs, including but not limited to lowering the amount of LDL created by the liver, lowering the amount of LDL that is absorbed from your intestines, increasing levels of HDL or lowering levels of triglycerides.Your doctor may put you on one, or a variety of medications to meet your individual treatment goals.

Blood cholesterol levels have been proven to be a major, modifiable risk factor for the development of heart disease. A risk factor is a condition that increases your chance of getting a disease. A modifiable risk factor is something you have the ability to change. High cholesterol levels can be treated with lifestyle modifications, supplement and/or prescription medication. Treatment to change blood cholesterol levels have been shown to lower your risk of getting heart disease or having a heart attack or stroke.

There are many different types of cholesterol lowering medications that your doctor may prescribe, however these prescriptions can cause certain nutritional deficiencies that may increase your risk for side effects or diminish the risk reduction you would otherwise get from the cholesterol lowering medications. NutraMD Cholesterol Essential Nutrients® supplement was designed to work with your cholesterol lowering medications by replacing lost nutrients reducing the risk of dangerous side effects, and promote better health.

Medications for treatment of High Cholesterol:

The three main classes include statins, fibrates, and bile acid sequestrants.

Statins include the following medications:
Lipitor (atorvastatin)
Zocor (simvastatin)
Pravachol (pravastatin).
Mevacor (lovastatin)
Crestor (rosuvastatin)
Advicor (lovastatin + niacin).
Caduet (atorvastatin + amlodipine).

The main function of statins is to reduce an individual¡¦s risk for cardiovascular disease (i.e., heart attack, stroke, peripheral vascular disease, atherosclerosis, arteriosclerosis, and plaque development in arteries) by reducing the total and LDL cholesterol levels as well as by reducing certain plaque promoting factors and increasing artery dilating factors.Your doctor may prescribe a statin if you have high cholesterol or have had heart attack or stroke in the past. If you have been diagnosed with high blood pressure or diabetes but do not have high cholesterol, your doctor may still prescribe a statin to reduce your risk for cardiovascular disease. Statins help lower cholesterol by blocking it’s direct synthesis throughout the body but primarily in the liver, however the action of the medication also blocks the synthesis of Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) and has a potential negative effect on the synthesis of vitamin D.

* CoQ10 deficiency has been linked to the following diseases and symptoms:

Congestive heart failure, high blood pressure, rhabdomyolysis (muscle break down), muscle and joint pain, and fatigue.

Therefore to achieve maximum benefit from the statin medication and minimize potential side effects of nutrient deficiencies, you should compliment your prescription medication by taking NutraMD Cholesterol Essential Nutrients® supplement. By doing this you will balance the risk/benefit ratio further in your favor.

Fibrates include the following medications:

Tricor, Antara, and Lofibra (fenofibrates)
Lopid (gemfibrozil).

The main functions of fibrates are to lower triglycerides and raise HDL (good cholesterol).  These medicines also have a mild lowering effect on LDL (bad cholesterol) and total cholesterol. Your doctor may prescribe fibrates in combination with a statin or bile acid sequestrants. The down side of fibrates is there ability to increase muscle pain and myalgia (including rhabdomyolysis).11-15 These medications also have the ability to raise homocysteine levels.11-15  Homocysteine is a chemical (amino acid metabolite) which when elevated is a risk factor for heart disease, atherosclerosis, stroke, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and osteoporosis.  The only substances known to lower homocysteine levels are the B-vitamins (folate, riboflavin, cobalamin, and pyridoxine).Therefore to reduce the potential risks while taking fibrates, you should also be taking NutraMD Cholesterol Essential Nutrients® supplement.

Bile Acid Sequestrants include the following medications:

Questran or Questran Light (cholestyramine)
Welchol (colesevelam HCl).

The main functions of bile acid sequestrants are to lower cholesterol by binding to it in the intestine and preventing its absorption thus allowing its excretion in the feces. Your doctor may prescribe this type of medicine in combination with fibrates and statins. Unfortunately, bile acid sequestrants will also bind to vitamins A, D, E, and K as well as essential fats in the intestine preventing their absorption into the blood stream thus leading to their deficiencies. A few of the problems which arise from deficiencies of vitamins A, D, E, K, and essential fatty acids include the following: Heart disease, high cholesterol, stroke, high triglycerides, cancer, thyroid disease, autoimmune disease, bone disease, arthritis, joint pain, muscle pain, cataracts, skin lesions, allergies, and many other.Therefore, to reduce potential side effects of nutrient deficiencies you should take NutraMD Cholesterol Essential Nutrients® supplement as long as you are on bile acid sequestrants.

In summary, cholesterol-lowering medications prescribed by your doctor are necessary to treat your condition; however, you should also be aware that the long term potential nutritional side effects can be just as big a risk factor for your condition as well as other conditions. Put the odds in your favor and maintain your health with NutraMD Cholesterol Essential Nutrients® supplement.

Technorati Tags: Blood cholesterol levels, cholesterol medications, Crestor, HDL, LDL, Medications for high cholesterol treatment, Triglicerides

Cholesterol is a unique substance that is used by every cell of your body to make cell membranes, which are like the skin of the cell. Cell membrane is a gate keeper, it regulate what goes into the cell and what goes out. It determines how to respond to various hormones and other chemicals. Cell membrane produces special substances (prostaglandins) that regulate many important biological functions. One of the major components of the cell membranes is the LDL cholesterol, the same one we call “bad.”

Most major hormones, such as estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, cortisol, aldosterone, and many others are made from LDL cholesterol. Vitamin D is made from LDL cholesterol. Bile is also made from LDL cholesterol. To satisfy this widespread demand for cholesterol you need to provide about 2,000 mg every day!

So important is the need for cholesterol that your liver, intestine, brain, and other organs are set up to make it. That’s right, most of the cholesterol in your body does not come from food. Even if you never eat anything with cholesterol in it, you will have as much cholesterol as you need because you can make it yourself.

There is a reason why beef has cholesterol - because cows, just like humans, need cholesterol for good health. Cows are strict vegetarians, but they make cholesterol because it is necessary for normal function of every cell of the body.

Low cholesterol increases the risk of stroke. This was first reported in 1971 by Japanese researchers. It was later confirmed by many other studies, including those done in the United States. Some studies have shown a relationship between low cholesterol and colon cancer. Other studies showed that low cholesterol (either natural or caused by drugs) is associated with increased risk of non-cardiovascular deaths (cancer, infections, lung problems).

A National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) held a conference in October 1990 where researchers from the US, Europe, Israel and Japan have presented studies describing this problem. The idea was to figure out why this happens. Well, they did not have an explanation and that’s where it all ended.

If you have not heard about this conference it is because the drug companies have brainwashed most of us (including most doctors) into believing that we need to fight cholesterol and to bring it down. You can’t blame them, that’s how they make many billions of dollars selling cholesterol drugs.

Next time your doctors tells you to use one of these drugs, ask him/her to show you any study that shows that reducing cholesterol will save your life or even significantly reduce the risk of heart attack.

An article in the Lancet (January 2007) written by doctors from Harvard Medical School and University of British Columbia summarized the analysis of all major studies where statin drugs (Lipitor, Crestor, Zocor, Mevacor, etc.) were used to reduce cholesterol levels. They report that none of the studies showed reduction in mortality. In other words the number of deaths was not reduced by drugs.

Statins did not reduce the number of heart attacks in women. They did reduce heart attacks in men between 30 and 69 years by a whopping 1.5%! There was no effect in men older than 69. As the doctors point out, it means that 67 people have to take these drugs for 5 years to prevent 1 heart attack.

Would you be willing to take a toxic drug that can cause liver disease and other serious problems if you could reduce the risk of anything by just 1.5%? I don’t think so.

So now you know the truth about cholesterol, which is more than your doctor knows. If you are taking a statin drug your best bet would be to get off it as soon as possible.

Technorati Tags: cholesterol lowering drugs, Crestor, Lipitor, statin drug, truth about cholesterol

In documents posted online Friday, the Food and Drug Administration cites the findings of AstraZeneca’s study released last November. The study showed that patients with lower cholesterol and few heart risks could still benefit from taking Crestor, setting the stage for a dramatic expansion in use of the drug that already exceeds $1 billion in annual sales.

The British drugmaker wants the FDA to broaden Crestor’s labeling based on those results.

But the FDA’s review also cites several safety concerns, including a higher rate of diabetes in patients taking Crestor.

About 2.8 percent of patients taking Crestor in the 17,000-patient Jupiter study developed diabetes, compared with 2.3 percent of patients taking a dummy pill. The difference was statistically significant, according to the FDA.

But one FDA reviewer suggests that diabetes is a side effect of all drugs in that class, which include Crestor, Pfizer’s Lipitor and other cholesterol-lowering pills.

“It is this clinical reviewer’s opinion that the treatment benefit observed in the Jupiter trial outweighs the risk, but further clinical trials are needed to further define this benefit-risk ratio,” writes the unnamed reviewer.

The FDA on Tuesday will ask a panel of outside experts to weigh in on whether Crestor use should be expanded. The agency is not required to follow the group’s advise, though it often does.

The panel also will discuss 13 deaths due to gastrointestinal disorders seen in Crestor patients, compared with just one in the placebo group. The agency review suggests the higher rate was a “chance finding.”

The FDA also will raise questions about 18 Crestor patients who reported a “confusional state,” compared with four in the placebo group.

AstraZeneca’s Jupiter study focused on patients with lower cholesterol and elevated C-reactive protein, a key indicator of inflammation that can lead to clogged arteries. Under current guidelines, those patients are not recommended for treatment with statins, the best-selling class of cholesterol-lowering drugs.

Patients taking Crestor experienced a 44 percent reduction in major heart problems, including heart attack, stroke and death. It’s unclear whether the positive results seen in Jupiter were due to lower cholesterol or C-reative protein, since Crestor reduces both.

In its own briefing documents, AstraZeneca points out that half of all heart problems occur in patients with normal cholesterol levels, who stand to benefit from expanded use of Crestor.

Broader FDA labeling for the drug would expand the potential U.S. market by at least 6 million patients, according to the FDA. Sales of the drug already rose 30 percent in the last quarter to $1.15 billion compared with the prior year period.

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A large study found that people who were taking these drugs when they caught seasonal flu and had to be hospitalized were twice as likely to survive than those who were not on such medicines.

This doesn’t prove that statins can cure flu, or that starting on them after catching the flu would help. A federal study is under way now to test that. Doctors are optimistic, because previous studies also found that statins may improve survival from infectious diseases.

“It’s very promising,” said the new study’s leader, Dr. Ann Thomas of the Oregon Public Health Division. Results were discussed Thursday at an Infectious Diseases Society of America conference in Philadelphia.

“It’s intriguing and exciting,” and the benefit seen from statins is “substantial,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University doctor whose hospital in Nashville, Tenn., was involved in the research.

“There are relatively few downsides to trying statins,” which are cheap, relatively safe, and already among the most widely used medicines in the world, he said.

Treatment is a crucial issue for swine flu because vaccine is slow to reach the public, and flu medicines like Tamiflu are being reserved for only the sickest patients.

Statins have long been known to reduce inflammation along with cholesterol. Much of the damage that flu causes, whether it’s seasonal or the new H1N1 virus, is from inflammation and an overreaction by the immune system as it fights the virus.

Earlier studies found that statins improved survival from pneumonia and serious bacterial bloodstream infections. The new research, sponsored by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is the first large one in the United States to look at statins for flu.

It involved 2,800 people hospitalized with lab-confirmed seasonal flu in 10 states in 2007-2008. Medical records show that 801 received statins in the hospital. They probably were just continuing the cholesterol treatment they had been taking before catching the flu, though researchers don’t know this for sure.

More than 3 percent of those not taking statins died in the hospital or in the following month. The rate was half that among statin users, even though they were more likely to have underlying health problems like heart disease. Researchers took other factors such as age into account and still saw the same benefit from statin use.

“It’s an important study,” said Dr. Andrew Pavia, a pediatrics professor at the University of Utah and head of the infectious disease society’s pandemic flu task force. He said he now places a high priority on testing statins as a treatment.

“It gives us a pretty cost-effective tool if it works,” he said.

There might be justification for trying these drugs now in certain patients not doing well on any other treatment, said Dr. Ronald Turner of the University of Virginia, a prominent virologist who had no role in the new study.

“If you get yourself to the point where you don’t have anything to offer and things are going poorly for the patient, then maybe to try something on a speculative note is appropriate,” he said.

The statin study is the second piece of good news on the treatment front in a week. Last Friday, the federal Food and Drug Administration authorized emergency use of the experimental drug peramivir as a swine flu treatment.

Recent results from an Asian study showed that a single intravenous dose of peramivir (purr-AM-uh-veer) cleared up flu symptoms as effectively as five days of Tamiflu pills. Some very sick patients need IV treatments because they can’t swallow pills or absorb the medicine well.

BioCryst Pharmaceuticals Inc. of Birmingham, Ala., is developing peramivir with Japan-based Shionogi & Co.

Statins are available in generic form and also sold as Lipitor by Pfizer Inc.; Zocor by Merck & Co.; Crestor by AstraZeneca PLC, and Pravachol by Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., among others.

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