Blood cholesterol - a chemist's perspective I

摘要

Many of us may spend a large fraction of our time and money making sure that we don't die 'before our time' - a basic human motivation that has spawned a massive health and medical industry. One class of drugs, the statins, generates approximately $29 billion per annum in global revenues for the pharmaceutical industry despite controversy about their use and effectiveness. The hypothesis behind statin use seems simple: high cholesterol in blood is correlated to heart disease, a major cause of poor health and early death in many developed countries; if taken regularly, statins Lower the measured cholesterol in blood. Therefore, if your blood cholesterol is greater than a certain concentration, then your general practitioner may advise you to take statins.