Red flag
Commenting for this news organization, Sadiya Sana Khan, MD, MSc, assistant professor of medicine (cardiology) and preventive medicine (epidemiology), Northwestern University, Chicago, said: “I think the most important point [of the study] is to identify people with very high HDL-C. This can serve as a reminder to discuss heart-healthy lifestyles and discussion of statin therapy if needed, based on LDL-C.”
In an accompanying editorial coauthored with Gregg Fonarow, MD, Ahmanson-UCLA Cardiomyopathy Center, University of California, Los Angeles, the pair wrote: “Although the present findings may be related to residual confounding, high HDL-C levels should not automatically be assumed to be protective.”
They advised clinicians to “use HDL-C levels as a surrogate marker, with very low and very high levels as a red flag to target for more intensive primary and secondary prevention, as the maxim for HDL-C as ‘good’ cholesterol only holds for HDL-C levels of 80 mg/dL or less.”
This study was supported in part by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the American Heart Association, and the Abraham J. & Phyllis Katz Foundation. Dr. Quyyumi and coauthors report no relevant financial relationships. Dr. Khan reports receiving grants from the American Heart Association and the National Institutes of Health outside the submitted work. Dr. Fonarow reports receiving personal fees from Abbott, Amgen, AstraZeneca, Bayer, Cytokinetics, Edwards, Janssen, Medtronic, Merck, and Novartis outside the submitted work. No other disclosures were reported.
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.