Is Cholesterol a good measure of risk?

Blood cholesterol by itself is a poor predictor of individual risk of Coronary Heart Disease . There is massive overlap between cholesterol concentrations in individuals who did or did not have a heart attack. Apart from those with very high cholesterol levels an individual's cholesterol value (for 98% of the population) cannot be connected with individual risk of CHD.

People who cut their cholesterol levels with statins may raise the risk of cancer

The study found those with little of the "bad" cholesterol LDL saw more cancer case than those with higher levels.The researchers could not say if this was a side-effect of the statin or due to the low cholesterol. The analysis doesn't implicate the statin in increasing the risk of cancer where benefits of statins in lowering the risk of heart disease remain clear.There are evidence that lowering LDL cholesterol through statins saves lives by preventing heart attacks and strokes.Reasearchers examined the relationship between low, medium and high doses of statins and rates of newly diagnosed cancer. Higher rates of the disease - which were not of any type or location - were observed in the group with the lower levels.