Quote of the week for you here on how statins may be lowering cholesterol too far and increasing Alzheimer’s risk. And also why lowering cholesterol is not the be all and end all of cardio treatment – it’s all about inflammation, as I have said numerous times – why are we creating higher cholesterol in the first place – probably to control inflammation?
Research released this week has discovered that lowering levels of cholesterol also reduced the amount of the protein ABCA7 in the brain. Previous studies have shown that the protein protects against Alzheimer’s, and people aged between 63 and 78 are more prone to develop the disease if their levels drop.
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Researchers from Temple University Health System wanted to find out if the protein in human brain cells is affected by cholesterol and inflammation, and so they reduced levels of cholesterol in one line of brain cells, and also fed the cells the statin drug, rosuvastatin, which stops cholesterol from synthesizing; in other words, ABCA7 wasn’t regenerating once the cells had been exposed to the statin. In a separate test, the same cell lines were fed molecules, known as cytokines, that trigger inflammation.
ABCA7 levels dropped by up to 40 percent when cholesterol was depleted—a process that can lead to Alzheimer’s, the researchers stated.
The researchers didn’t specify which form of cholesterol had been targeted, but as statins were used, it’s safe to assume it was LDL (low-density lipoprotein), characterized as the ‘bad’ cholesterol. It is already known that LDL protects the brain, and now researchers have demonstrated how it does it.
This is all part of a much bigger picture, and it leads back to one of the biggest blunders in Western medicine. Since the 1980s, LDL cholesterol has been fingered as the bad guy that is behind the epidemic of heart disease. It’s the type that clogs up our arteries and that leads to atherosclerosis, or cardiovascular disease (CVD), or so the fats theory of heart disease goes.
It’s true: LDL does build up around the artery wall. But why? As WDDTY has been arguing for years, LDL is a protective agent that is repairing arteries that have been damaged by inflammation. The new research is demonstrating we are seeing similar mechanisms in brain cells.
It can be likened to blaming the fire brigade for fires because they always seem to be around when there is one.
The real culprit is inflammation, of course, and it’s the driver of heart disease, Alzheimer’s and much more besides. Reducing levels of a protective agent such as LDL explains the epidemic of disease, especially in older people who are always being encouraged to start statin therapy.
You can read a more technical overview of this research and see the research report here.