More Good Cholesterol Doesn't Help

摘要

The effects of good cholesterol are more nuanced than once thought. A clinical trial testing whether people do better when drugs increase their HDL, the cholesterol believed to help prevent heart disease, flopped last week. The U.S. National Institutes of Health study had enrolled more than 3400 people who had a history of heart disease and paltry levels of HDL. Everyone got a statin, which lowers LDL, or "bad," cholesterol. But some participants also got a form of niacin, a drug that raises HDL. The study was supposed to run for 6 years, finishing in 2012, but it was halted after researchers discovered that people taking niacin were no less likely to suffer heart attacks and strokes.