HEALTHY DIETS AND SCIENCE: Low cholesterol increases the risk of death by 75% after a heart attack

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

Friday 16 May 2014

Low cholesterol increases the risk of death by 75% after a heart attack

2001 Nov;22(22):2085-103

Study title and authors:

Assessment of absolute risk of death after myocardial infarction by use of multiple-risk-factor assessment equations: GISSI-Prevenzione mortality risk chart.

Marchioli R, Avanzini F, Barzi F, Chieffo C, Di Castelnuovo A, Franzosi MG, Geraci E, Maggioni AP, Marfisi RM, Mininni N, Nicolosi GL, Santini M, Schweiger C, Tavazzi L, Tognoni G, Valagussa F; GISSI-Prevenzione Investigators.

Gruppo Italiano per lo Studio della Sopravvivenza nell'Infarto miocardico (GISSI), Associazione Nazionale Medici Cardiologi Ospedalieri (ANMCO), Italy.

This study can be accessed at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11686666

This study investigated the risk factors for death in patients after they had suffered a heart attack. The study included 11,324 men and women from the GISSI-Prevenzione trial who were followed for four years.

Regarding cholesterol levels, the study found that those with the lowest cholesterol, under 190 mg/dL (4.91 mmol/L), had a 75% increased risk of death compared to those with the highest cholesterol, over 245 mg/dL (6.3 mmol/L).