Word: ldl
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Researchers have known since at least the 1990s that trans fats are doubly bad for the heart. They boost bad-cholesterol (LDL) levels and depress good-cholesterol (HDL) levels in the blood. The Department of Health and Human Services estimates that processed foods and oils account for 80% of the national intake of trans fats. The FDA suggests you cut down as much as possible on the fats. One study concluded that eliminating hydrogenated oils could prevent up to 100,000 premature coronary deaths a year...
...surprisingly then, the new cardiac scans are helping to fuel a more aggressive focus on prevention. If a cardiac scan shows your doctor that you have mild coronary artery disease, then, in addition to trying to get your LDL cholesterol level under 70 mg/dL, he or she is probably going to put you on a daily aspirin regimen and make sure your blood pressure is nice and low. "Conversely," says Cannon, "if you have a scan and you're normal, you don't have to start taking five different medications...
...knows? My doctor didn't test for it, and it didn't occur to me to ask. But two reports in last week's New England Journal of Medicine suggest that CRP may be just as important a risk factor for coronary-artery disease and heart attacks as LDL--and maybe more so. Does that mean I should have had the test? Not on the basis of what was known then. But now things are different...
Doctors also know that statins can reduce inflammation. So cardiologists from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston put 3,745 patients who had experienced heart attacks or severe chest pain on statins, and later measured levels of both LDL and CRP. It turned out that patients who ended up with low CRP were less likely to have heart attacks or die than those whose CRP stayed high--whether or not their LDL levels went down. Showing that CRP reduction is at least as important as cholesterol reduction, says Dr. Paul Ridker, lead author of the report, is a "home...
...second study, from the Cleveland Clinic, also tracked cardiac patients, but instead of looking at heart attacks, the researchers measured actual plaque buildup. The patients whose CRP dropped the most on statins saw their plaques get smaller--again, independent of what happened to their LDL...