Extremely high HDL – beneficial or harmful?

This study showed extremely high HDL was associated with lower risks for all-cause mortality and cardiovascular events compared to low HDL. But they had higher risks compared to very high HDL. Paradoxically high all-cause mortality in those with extremely high HDL has also been reported in another study of 52 268 men and 64 240 women [5]. Though most of these studies showed a negative role for extremely high HDL, there is recent study from Korea which showed that extremely high HDL was not associated with increased risk of mortality, myocardial infarction and stroke [6]. That study with 343,687 subjects also defined extremely high HDL as 90 mg/dl or more. The median follow up period was 6 years. So to conclude the final word on extremely high HDL is still not available. We need large scale population studies of longer period, across multiple countries to say whether the U shaped dose response relationship noted in several studies is actually due to HDL or some other associated confounding factors. References Ko DT, Alter DA, Guo H, Koh M, Lau G, Austin PC, Booth GL, Hogg W, Jackevicius CA, Lee DS, Wijeysundera HC, Wilkins JT, Tu JV. High-Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol and Cause-Specific Mortality in Individuals Without Previous Cardiovascular Conditions: The CANHEART Study. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2016 Nov 8;68(19):2073-2083. doi: 10.1016/j.jacc.2016.08.038. PMID: 27810046. Paunio M, Heinonen OP, Virtamo J, Klag MJ, Manninen V, Albanes D, Comstock GW. HDL cholesterol and morta...
Source: Cardiophile MD - Category: Cardiology Authors: Tags: Cardiology Source Type: blogs