Diseases Related
To Cholesterol
Familial
hypercholesterolemia
There are hereditary disorders of cholesterol metabolism (familial
hypercholesterolemia), which lead to very high blood cholesterol
levels regardless of food intake. In one of the known hypercholesterolemia
forms, the LDL receptors are only incompletely developed or completely absent. techbizcenter
Heterozygous carriers of these hereditary factors are more
often affected than average by heart attacks and other vascular diseases at a
young age. According to a study from 1991, this no longer applies to older
people. Here, the mortality drops significantly and is only 44% compared to the
standard.
The most common monogenetic hypercholesterolemia, the
so-called autosomal dominant familial hypercholesterolemia, is about 1: 500.
However, there seems to have been significant variability in the frequency of
symptoms in those affected over the past 200 years, suggesting an interaction
between a changing environment (e.g., diet, lifestyle) and genotype. For more
severe forms of hypercholesterolemia (such as familial hypercholesterolemia),
drug therapies with statins, LDL apheresis, and sometimes surgical forms of treatment
are used. technologywebdesign
Gallstones
Cholesterol is captivated by the body with the bile acid in
the intestine. Cholesterol is blended and involved in the small intestine. The
solubility of cholesterol in total bile is 0.26%. When the composition of the
bile changes, cholesterol stones form. 80% of gallstones are high in
cholesterol, and 50% are pure cholesterol stones. The formation of gallstones
occurs not only in the gallbladder but also in the liver. marketingmediaweb
Other
forms of the disease
Less known diseases are, for example, the cholesterol
storage disease ( xanthomatosis or Hand-Schüller-Christian syndrome ), in which
cholesterol is pathologically stored in the skin, among other things. answerhop
Smith-Lemli-Opitz syndrome (SLO) occurs with a frequency of
approx. 1: 60,000 in Europe. The disease with SLO syndrome is a defect in the
last enzyme in the cholesterol biosynthetic pathway, 7-dehydrocholesterol
reductase. The clinical picture is characterized by mental retardation, growth
problems, developmental disorders, and facial changes.
Furthermore, hypocholesterolemia is known in which the
cholesterol level is below 130 mg/dl in the blood. This occurs primarily in
liver damage such as cirrhosis of the liver, the genetic Tangier disease, and
manganese deficiency. Among other things, vitamin E can no longer be
transported to its respective destination. tipsfromcomputertechs
Cholesterol
and coronary artery disease (CHD)
Cardiovascular diseases, especially coronary artery disease (
CHD ), replaced infectious diseases as the most common cause of death in the
western industrialized nations as the standard of living rose in the 20th
century. In the 1950s, the American nutritionist Ancel Keys' hypothesis
received a lot of attention that this development was also favored by the fact
that increasing prosperity was accompanied by a diet that was too fatty. In
particular, lead a high cholesterol diet (primarily meat, chicken eggs, milk,
butter, and other dairy products). The ingestion of food containing cholesterol
is one of the many causes of a heart attack. Key himself relativized the
importance of diet-related cholesterol intake for the cholesterol level in
human blood as early as 1965: "To control the serum level, dietary
cholesterol should not be completely ignored, but observing this factor alone
is of little use."
Meaning
of the hypothesis
The hypothesis that a high-cholesterol diet and a high blood
cholesterol level played a causal role in the development of heart attacks has
become widespread in the scientific environment and the public eye over the
past decades. Today it is an essential element in preventing heart attacks in
medical practice. In the USA in particular, but also in Europe, it led to the
spread of artificially reduced or cholesterol-free foods ( e.g., margarine )
and the routine prescription of drugs to lower cholesterol levels.
Cholesterol-lowering drugs are now the pharmaceutical market
segment with the highest sales worldwide. In 2004, cholesterol-lowering drugs
achieved 27 billion US dollars worldwide, with a growth rate of 10.9%. The drug
with the highest sales is atorvastatin (Lipitor ®, Sortis ® ) from the US
manufacturer Pfizer, which achieved worldwide sales of 12.2 billion US dollars
in 2005. However, this drug no longer
plays an essential role in the German market since health insurances introduced
a fixed price regulation for statins.
Around 25 million people around the world regularly take
cholesterol-lowering preparations.
Empirically
obtained evidence
Ø
The cholesterol hypothesis is based exclusively
on empirically obtained evidence. However, no biological mechanism has been
demonstrated which leads to plaque formation via cholesterol or an increased
cholesterol level.
Ø
In animal experiments, the administration of
food (milk, egg yolk) with high cholesterol in rabbits and other predominantly
vegetarian animals leads to arteriosclerosis development. This observation was
first published in 1908 by the Russian scientist Alexander Ignatowski. However,
these results' transferability to humans is controversial since their natural
regulating mechanism for cholesterol level almost completely compensates for
the intake of cholesterol through food. Therefore, similar studies were later
carried out on pigs, which showed a 70% homology of humans and monkeys, with
results identical to those of rabbits. In some of the monkey species
investigated (such as pigs, mostly omnivores with a predominantly vegetarian
diet), substantial individual differences were also found within a species. In
some individuals, the cholesterol level can be influenced by diet ("hyper responders");
in others, not (" hypo-responders ").
Ø
Cholesterol is an integral part of
arteriosclerotic plaques. This was proven in 1910 by the German chemist and
later Nobel Prize winner Adolf Windaus. digitalmarketingtrick
Ø
Ancel Keys published sensational comparative
studies of six (1953 ) and seven countries (1966, 1970, and 1980 ), in which he found a cross-national
correlation between the CHD rate (coronary artery disease) and the Percentage
of animal fats in the diet showed. Mostly in JapanThere was a low CHD rate with
a low proportion of animal fats in the diet; in the USA, the opposite was
found. Later, however, he was accused of having deliberately only presented
those of the country data sets published at the time that seem to support the
correlation he postulated. Other studies examining the CHD rate of immigrant
Japanese in the United States found an alignment of the lower Japanese rate
with the US CHD rate. This could speak for diet-related factors, but could also
be explained by other factors related to lifestyle. Critics also question the
comparability of the causes of death published by different countries, which
was assumed in both cases,
Ø
In earlier men up to 45, a high total or LDL
cholesterol level is associated with an increased incidence of coronary heart
disease. It represents a different risk factor and the other known risk
factors. This means that this correlation is not alone can be explained by the
correlation of the cholesterol level with other general CHD risk factors. Further
known risk factors are age, gender, positive family history (i.e., the occurrence
of a heart attack in close relatives), smoking, diabetes mellitus, high blood
pressure, obesity, and sedentary lifestyle. Contrary to popular belief,
however, high cholesterol levels are not a risk factor for coronary heart
disease for both younger and older women and older men.
Ø
Due to a hereditary genetic defect, patients
with familial hypercholesterolemia have a very high cholesterol level (often
400 mg/dl and more). At a young age, the risk of CHD is many times higher than
that of the average population. These patients' life expectancy could be
increased by giving various lipid-lowering drugs. However, the CHD risk in
these patients normalizes from around 55 years of age.
Ø
Numerous studies have demonstrated that taking
drugs to lower cholesterol, especially in high-risk male CAD patients, can decrease
the risk of myocardial infarction. However, this has generally been offset by
an increase in other death causes. In the past few years, the statins drug
group was also able to demonstrate, for the first time, a slight
life-prolonging benefit of taking a cholesterol-lowering preparation in
individual studies. However, this was only shown in some of the studies conducted
exclusively in middle-aged male high-risk CHD patients.
Ø
People with a specific variant in the gene for
the low-density lipoprotein receptor ( LDL receptor ) have lower blood
cholesterol levels for life. The risk of heart attack is reduced by 23% in
these people. However, the LDL receptor binds LDL and several other proteins, so
that the connection has not yet been established through this fact.
Ø
A higher total cholesterol level correlates with
women's higher life expectancy compared to men. The average life expectancy for men in Germany
in 1995/97 was 73.6 years, for women 80 years.
READ MORE ABOUT TECHNOLOGY ENTHUSIASTS @ webtechradar