The link between high levels of 'bad' LDL cholesterol and cardiovascular mortality in elderly people is being questioned in a new controversial study.
The link between high levels of 'bad' LDL cholesterol and cardiovascular mortality in elderly people is being questioned in a new controversial study.
An international team of researchers looked at 19 studies involving 68,000 participants over the age of 60 and found little to no association between LDL cholesterol and heart disease, notes The Guardian.
According to The Independent, researchers "...found that 92 per cent of people over 60-years-old with high cholesterol lived as long as, or longer than those with low cholesterol levels.”
As a result of these findings, one of the researchers, Sherif Sultan with the University of Ireland, has advised people in this older group against taking cholesterol-lowering medications, calling them “a total waste of time and resources.”
However, other experts have publicly expressed their doubts about the research team's assertions.
Jeremy Pearson, associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation, points out that large clinical trials have shown “very clearly that lowering LDL cholesterol reduces our risk of death overall...regardless of age.”
Meanwhile, Colin Baigent, an Oxford University epidemiologist, notes that the recent study has “serious weaknesses and, as a consequence, has reached completely the wrong conclusion.”
Among the issues that have been raised is that participants with high cholesterol could have already been on statin medications which could explain the relatively positive outcomes.
The research was also a review of other studies which means that mitigating factors like preexisting conditions were not uniformly applied across the population.
