Word: hdl
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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That judgment was reinforced by four new studies presented at the American Heart Association's annual meeting in Washington last month. They confirmed earlier research indicating that low levels of HDL can result in heart disease -- even in individuals whose total cholesterol count is in the supposedly "safe" zone below 200 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dl) of blood...
...counter this confusion, the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute has for the past three years been running a National Cholesterol Education Program. Last year the program set 200 mg/dl as the amount of total cholesterol (essentially LDL plus HDL) above which individuals are considered to be potentially at risk of developing heart disease; those between 200 and 239 are borderline high risk; anyone with a count of 240 or more may be at high risk. The program suggested that everybody should aim for an LDL count of 130 or lower. However, it did not recommend specific HDL targets...
Portable analyzers, though, cannot calculate LDL and HDL levels. Even many laboratories have been unable to give consistently accurate counts of HDL. Yet that figure may be the most vital statistic of all in evaluating cardiovascular health in otherwise moderate- or low-risk individuals. Says Dr. Bruce Gordon, associate professor of medicine at Manhattan's Rogosin Institute: "There are a sizable number of people who would be inappropriately treated unless their HDL levels were taken into account...
...Cincinnati is one heart-disease patient who has benefited from drug therapy. A 55-year-old former printing-plant foreman, Michael and his brother Daniel, 58, a retired barber in Canonsburg, Pa., have a genetic disorder that results in very high levels of LDL and low levels of HDL. Daniel has suffered a heart attack, and both brothers have had bypass surgery. Now the Brunos are on low-saturated-fat diets and are taking lovastatin. In addition, Michael is taking gemfibrozil. Since the brothers started their programs, Michael's total cholesterol has fallen from 224 to 184, and Daniel...
Even though HDL's relationship to coronary heart disease was first noted in 1951, many people are still not being advised by their doctors to raise their good-cholesterol levels. The reason, says Dr. Robert Levy, president of New Jersey's Sandoz Research Institute, is that there is no absolute proof that raising HDL alone can lower a person's risk of heart disease. No convincing body of evidence from animal studies has yet demonstrated the value of raising HDL, and no clinical trial to date has specifically targeted humans with low HDL. "Much the same question existed...