If LDL cholesterol level predicts heart disease then persons with low LDL should be better off than persons with high LDL. Here is what some Norwegian doctors did:
They simply selected sequential patients with LDL cholesterol scores below 2.7mmol/l. . . . They ignored all people with LDL concentrations from 2.7 to 4.5mmol/l but did enroll all people with an LDL >4.5mmol . . . So they then had two groups of people, those at catastrophic risk of LDL-blocked-arteries and those with [very] little LDL . . . They did the scheduled angiography and checked how many patients had >70% blockage of at least two coronary arteries in each group.
Guess what: LDL cholesterol doesn’t matter. They recruited 47 patients with low LDL-C, of whom 21 had significant CAD. They got 46 high LDL-C patients, of whom 24 turned out to have CAD.
Thanks to Dave Lull.
Hyperlipid (to which you have linked for this post) is a wonderful site. Peter writes with humor, but really takes apart bad studies ruthlessly and skillfully. You can get a great education in physiology and nutrition just by reading the archives.