The raison d'etre of this website is to provide you with hard scientific information which may help you make informed decisions in your quest for health (so far I have blogged concise summaries of over 1,500 scientific studies and have had three books published).

My research is mainly focused on the effects of cholesterol, saturated fat and statin drugs on health. If you know anyone who is worried about their cholesterol levels and heart disease, or has been told to take statin drugs you could send them a link to this website, and to my statin or cholesterol or heart disease books.

David Evans

Independent Health Researcher

Tuesday 13 December 2011

Low cholesterol levels are associated with higher death rates in stroke, heart failure, and cancer

Nago N, Ishikawa S, Goto T, Kayaba K.
Tokyo-kita Social Health Insurance Hospital, Clinical Education Center, Kita-ku, Tokyo, Japan. nago@jadecom.or.jp

This study can be accessed at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21160131

This study of 12,334 healthy adults aged 40 to 69 years investigated the relationship between low cholesterol and mortality and examined whether that relationship differs with respect to cause of death.

The study found:
(a) Those with the lowest cholesterol (under 4.14mmol/L - 160mg/dL) had around a 50% higher death rate than those with cholesterol up to 5.17mmol/L - 200mg/dL. High cholesterol (above 6.21mmol/L - 240mg/dL) was not a risk factor.
(b) The risk of death in the lowest cholesterol group for hemorrhagic stroke, heart failure (excluding myocardial infarction), and cancer mortality was significantly higher than those of the moderate cholesterol group, for each cause of death.

To conclude: Low cholesterol was related to high mortalityHigh cholesterol was not a risk factor for mortality.