German researchers said that over 10 years, around 50 to 80 heart attacks, strokes and heart disease-related deaths per 1,000 patients could be averted if all doctors correctly followed guidelines on cholesterol-lowering targets.

“The numbers highlight the enormous health implications ... in our findings,” said Heribert Schunkert, who led the study into more than 25,000 patients in Germany.

While claims have been made for a beneficial effect of calcium and vitamin D on cholesterol levels, supporting evidence is thin, the study’s lead author, Dr. Swapnil Rajpathak of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, noted in an email to Reuters Health.

High levels of cholesterol and other lipids (harmful blood fats such as triglycerides) are a well-established risk factor for cardiovascular disease—the number one killer of Americans. So anything that could lower levels might be a welcome addition to millions of medicine cabinets.

People who ate a diet low in carbohydrates but relatively high in fat lost the same amount of weight over six weeks as those who consumed a high-carb diet.

But levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) or “bad” cholesterol increased significantly in the low-carb group, while they fell in the high-carb group. High LDL levels are a risk factor for heart disease because they are linked to clogged arteries.

Conventional wisdom holds that people should follow a healthful diet and get regular exercise to help control their cholesterol and triglycerides (another type of blood fat). But there has actually been little research into how well older adults’ cholesterol and triglyceride levels respond to diet changes.

In the new study, researchers looked at the effects of dietary-fat changes among 900 Australian adults age 49 and older who were followed for 10 years. At the outset, 5 percent were taking a cholesterol medication, usually a statin; a decade later, one-quarter were using drugs to control their cholesterol. 

Conventional wisdom holds that people should follow a healthy diet and get regular exercise to help control their cholesterol and triglycerides, another type of harmful blood fat. But there has actually been little research into how well older adults’ cholesterol and triglyceride levels respond to diet changes.

In the new study, researchers looked at the effects of dietary-fat changes among 900 Australian adults age 49 and older who were followed for 10 years. At the outset, 5 percent were taking a cholesterol-lowering medication, usually a statin; a decade later, one-quarter were using drugs to control their cholesterol. 

Researchers found that among 43 people who’d stopped using statins due to muscle pain, most were able to use either red yeast rice or the cholesterol drug pravastatin (Pravachol) for 12 weeks without suffering the side effect again.

The supplement and the statin were also similarly effective at lowering “bad” LDL cholesterol, the researchers report in the American Journal of Cardiology. 

The findings, published online November 10 in the Journal of Nutrition, a publication of the American Society for Nutrition, warns consumers against taking too much selenium until more research is done to gain a better understanding of the risks and benefits of selenium supplementation.

Study co-author, Dr. Saverio Stranges of the Warwick Medical School in Warwick, England, said the findings of this observational study are “consistent with the findings of earlier clinical work,” which have suggested an association between elevated blood levels of selenium and an increased risk of type 2 diabetes and high cholesterol.

Both studies, reported in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, shed new light on the role of cholesterol and cancer.

For years, researchers had noticed that people who have lower total cholesterol—a combination of both low-density lipoprotein or LDL, the “bad” kind, and high-density lipoprotein or HDL, the “good” kind—appeared more likely to have certain types of cancers than other people.

The study was led by Professor Ernest Arenas and demonstrates that the formation of dopamine-producing neurons during brain development in mice is dependent on the activation of a specific receptor in the brain by an oxidised form of cholesterol called oxysterol. Dopamine-producing nerve cells play an important part in many brain functions and processes, from motor skills to reward systems and dependency. They are also the type of cell that dies in Parkinson’s disease.

The scientists have also shown that embryonic stem cells cultivated in the laboratory, form more dopamine-producing nerve cells if they are treated with oxidised cholesterol. The same treatment also reduced the tendency of the stem cells to show uncontrolled growth.

“This finding may open new avenues for designing targeted therapies, for example by looking for small molecules that could impact these genes,” says Heiko Runz, whose group at the University Clinic Heidelberg carried out the research together with Rainer Pepperkok’s lab at EMBL.

High levels of cholesterol in the bloodstream are a major risk factor for atherosclerosis and coronary heart disease, one of the leading causes of death in developed countries today. Nevertheless, cholesterol is an important cellular component: 90% of the cholesterol in our bodies is inside our cells, where it does not cause any harm. Blood cholesterol levels are partly regulated by cells taking up cholesterol from the bloodstream, a process Runz and his colleagues are helping to unveil.