Is Low Cholesterol Bad in Heart Failure?
Tuesday April 11, 2006
Evidence is mounting that low cholesterol is not always good - in some medical disorders, having higher cholesterol levels may be beneficial. Heart failure might be one of those conditions. Even so, statins appear to be helpful in patients with heart failure - and may be the most helpful in heart failure patients whose cholesterol levels are already low! Read about the latest evidence on low cholesterol and the use of statins in patients with heart failure, and what it might mean here.
Comments
Someone please show me that lowering your cholestorol helps in the reduction of heart disease, i see opinions, but all i can find is studies showing the side effects of statin drugs.
There are scores of randomized clinical trials showing that reducing LDL cholesterol in patients with coronary artery disease significantly lowers the risk of recurrent cardiovascular events. There are similar studies showing significantly improved outcomes lowering cholesterol in patients without known coronary artery disease who have elevated cholesterol levels. Most of these positive studies have been conducted using statins. Statins do have side effects, but so do most drugs, and when used in appropriately selected patients the potential benefits far outweigh the potential risks.
Searching on MEDLINE instead of on Google, and perhaps spelling cholesterol differently than you did in your post, will reveal more actual medical literature on this topic, and fewer polemics on the evil medical-industrial complex and the vast statin conspiracy (which, I agree, dwarf in sheer volume the real data).
DrRich