Study Sheds Light on How High Cholesterol Causes Cancer !

Cholesterol

New research from the University of California, Los Angeles has found a previously unknown molecular mechanism involving cholesterol that may promote tumor growth in the intestines.

A report on the study — published in the journal Cell Stem Cell — reveals how increasing levels of cholesterol in mice increased proliferation of intestinal stem cells and made tumors grow faster.

One of the methods that the researchers used to increase the availability of cholesterol to intestinal cells in the mice was to feed them a high-cholesterol diet.

"We were excited to find," says senior author Peter Tontonoz, a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, "that cholesterol influences the growth of stem cells in the intestines, which in turn accelerates the rate of tumor formation by more than 100-fold."

He and his colleagues believe that their findings could pave the way to new treatments for gastrointestinal diseases, such as colon cancer.

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Screen Your Blood Cholesterol Levels For Your Heart Disease Risk!

Researchers have developed a first-of-its-kind rapid assay for measuring effectiveness of a patient’s high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) in cleaning up arterial cholesterol. This HDL-C function test could improve risk assessment and diagnosis, and help provide and monitor more personalized treatments for cardiovascular disease (CVD) patients.

Image: Research suggests a HDL-C function test could improve risk assessment and diagnosis,
and help provide and monitor more personalized treatments for CVD patients
(Photo courtesy of iStock).

While scientists have yet to fully elucidate how HDL-C helps protects against heart disease, one of its chief functions is thought to be mediating the removal of cholesterol from blood vessel walls. Recent studies have indicated that the ability of a patient’s HDL-C to do this – known as its cholesterol efflux capacity (CEC) – is a better gauge of CVD development than HDL-C levels on their own. This means, for example, that a patient with low levels of HDL-C but optimal CEC could be protected against heart disease to a greater degree than a patient with high levels of HDL-C but low CEC. However, the current standard research procedures for measuring CEC involve radioisotope-labeled cholesterol and cultured macrophages, making these methods too complex and time-consuming for clinical testing.

In this study, a team of researchers led by Amane Harada, PhD, of Sysmex Corporation (Kobe, Japan) and Ryuji Toh, MD, PhD, of Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine (Kobe, Japan) has developed a test for HDL-C function that is simple enough for clinical use. With a turnaround time of less than 6 hours, the test determines cholesterol uptake capacity (CUC) – the ability of HDL-C to accept additional cholesterol – which the researchers found correlates with CEC but is easier to measure. 

They evaluated their CUC test in 156 patients who had undergone revascularization (such as a stent or bypass) due to coronary artery disease and who had subsequently decreased their low-density lipoprotein cholesterol to a healthier level of less than 100 mg/dL. The study found that low CUC in these patients after treatment was significantly associated with the recurrence of coronary lesions. The researchers also determined that combining CUC with established CVD risk factors significantly improved the power of established factors to forecast which patients would redevelop heart disease.

If further trials validate this test, it could enable healthcare providers to use CUC in conjunction with HDL-C levels to better predict who is at risk for CVD onset or recurrence. This test could also be used to develop new treatments that increase CEC and to monitor their efficacy in patients.

“A more efficient enhancement of the atheroprotective functions of HDL may decrease the risk of atherosclerosis and [cardiovascular disease], although it has been difficult to develop therapeutic drugs with the expected effects,” wrote Harada and Toh in this paper, “We consider that this can be explained in part by the lack of a convenient assay system to evaluate HDL functionality without complicated or time-consuming procedures. In this respect, our cholesterol uptake assay provides a concise, accurate, and robust system for high-throughput analysis at low cost.”

The study, by Harada A et al, was published in the May 2017 issue of the Journal of Applied Laboratory Medicine.

Source: labmedica

The Best Medicine Against Cholesterol And High Blood Pressure

Cholesterol is a waxy substance that comes from two sources: your body and food. Excess cholesterol can form plaque between layers of artery walls, making it harder for your heart to circulate blood.

Plaque can break open and cause blood clots. If a clot blocks an artery that feeds the brain, it causes a stroke. If it blocks an artery that feeds the heart, it causes a heart attack.

Heart disease, stroke and other cardiovascular diseases are among the leading cause of death and now kill more than 800,000 adults in the US each year. Two main reasons people have heart disease or stroke are high blood pressure and cholesterol.

Read more: The Best Medicine Against Cholesterol And High Blood Pressure

Source: herb-cookbook

Stroke Could be Better Predicted with Biomarker Discovery

Stroke is a leading cause of disability and death in the United States, affecting more than 795,000 Americans every year. But what if doctors were better able to predict who is likely to have a stroke, providing greater opportunity for prevention? Researchers have uncovered four biomarkers that could help do just that.

In a study published in the journal Neurology, researchers found that individuals who had higher levels of four inflammatory biomarkers in their blood were at greater risk for stroke than those with lower levels.

Study co-author Dr. Ashkan Shoamanesh, of McMaster University in Canada, and colleagues say that - while further research is needed to determine whether these biomarkers could be used in clinical practice - their findings could pave the way for better prevention and treatment of stroke.

Stroke occurs when the flow of oxygen-rich blood to the brain is reduced, causing brain cell death.

Read more: Stroke Could be Better Predicted with Biomarker Discovery

Researchers have pinpointed four biomarkers that they say could help predict stroke risk.

Source: medicalnewstoday

Gallstones Raise the Risk of Heart Disease by a Fifth

A new meta-analysis, using data from hundreds of thousands of individuals, finds that gallbladder disease and heart disease are more intertwined than previously thought. The reasons behind this connection are, as yet, unclear.

Gallstones are small, hard deposits that form in the gallbladder - an organ that sits below the liver.

In wealthier countries, they are a common occurrence, affecting 10-15 percent of all adults.

Gallstones are thought to be produced due to an imbalance in the makeup of bile - a digestive aid produced by the liver and concentrated in the gallbladder.

Although generally small and often symptomless, over the years, gallstones can grow to the size of pebbles.

Read more: Gallstones Raise the Risk of Heart Disease by a Fifth

Gallstones' links to heart disease run deeper than previously thought.

Source: medicalnewstoday

Funny Picture 15: "Your Cholesterol is Off by a Wide Margarine."

Source: medicalnewstoday

See more funny pics!

Cholesterol: Types, Treatments, and Lifestyle Changes

Source: Healthline Networks

What Do You Want to Know About High Cholesterol?

Cholesterol is a substance that your liver produces naturally. It’s vital for the formation of cell membranes, vitamin D, and certain hormones.

Cholesterol is a waxy, fat-like substance. It doesn’t dissolve in water and therefore can't travel through the blood by itself. Lipoproteins are other particles formed in the liver that help transport cholesterol through the bloodstream. There are several major forms of lipoproteins that are important to your health.

Read more: What Do You Want to Know About High Cholesterol?

Source: quickanddirtytips

Gallstones: Epidemiology, Pathophysiology and Management.

Gallstones grow inside the gallbladder or biliary tract. These stones can be asymptomatic or symptomatic; only gallstones with symptoms or complications are defined as gallstone disease. Based on their composition, gallstones are classified into cholesterol gallstones, which represent the predominant entity, and bilirubin (‘pigment’) stones. Black pigment stones can be caused by chronic hemolysis; brown pigment stones typically develop in obstructed and infected bile ducts. For treatment, localization of the gallstones in the biliary tract is more relevant than composition. Overall, up to 20% of adults develop gallstones and >20% of those develop symptoms or complications. Risk factors for gallstones are female sex, age, pregnancy, physical inactivity, obesity and over nutrition. Factors involved in metabolic syndrome increase the risk of developing gallstones and form the basis of primary prevention by lifestyle changes. Common mutations in the hepatic cholesterol transporter ABCG8 confer most of the genetic risk of developing gallstones, which accounts for ∼25% of the total risk. Diagnosis is mainly based on clinical symptoms, abdominal ultrasonography and liver biochemistry tests. Symptoms often precede the onset of the three common and potentially life-threatening complications of gallstones (acute cholecystitis, acute cholangitis and biliary pancreatitis). Although our knowledge on the genetics and pathophysiology of gallstones has expanded recently, current treatment algorithms remain predominantly invasive and are based on surgery. Hence, our future efforts should focus on novel preventive strategies to overcome the onset of gallstones in at-risk patients in particular, but also in the population in general.

Introduction

Gallstones (cholelithiasis) are masses in the gallbladder or biliary tract that are caused by abnormally high levels of either cholesterol or bilirubin (a breakdown product of heme) in bile (Fig. 1). Gallstones are common (∼10–20% of the global adult population), and >20% of people with gallstones will develop symptoms in their lifetime (including biliary colic or infections), usually in adulthood. Gallstone disease is defined by the occurrence of symptoms or complications caused by gallstones in the gallbladder and/or the bile ducts. From a clinical perspective and in treatment algorithms, those with asymptomatic stones are not generally classified as having gallstone disease. Gallstone disease is among the gastrointestinal conditions associated with the highest socioeconomic costs.

Read more: Gallstones: Epidemiology, Pathophysiology and Management.

Figure 1: Classification of gallstones.

PrimeView Poster:

Gallstones are masses in the gallbladder or biliary tract. 10–20% of adults will develop gallstones in their lifetime, and >20% of those will develop symptoms or complications. This Primer by Lammert et al. focuses on the formation of gallstones, summarizes the current principles of treatment of the stones and their potential complications and envisions future approaches for this widespread disease. And this PrimeView focuses on the most common risk factors, which include genetics, ethnicity, sex, age, drugs, parasites, over nutrition and pregnancy.

Frank Lammert, Kurinchi Gurusamy, Cynthia W. Ko,Juan-Francisco Miquel, Nahum Méndez-Sánchez, Piero Portincasa, Karel J. van Erpecum, Cees J. van Laarhoven& David Q.-H. Wang

View poster: Gallstone Poster (high-resolution PDF (1.30 MB))

Source: NatureReviewsDiseasePrimers

Fasting no longer necessary before cholesterol test

For the first time, a team of international experts recommends that most people do not need to fast before having their cholesterol and triglyceride levels tested.

Fasting is a problem for many patients, they explain, and note the latest research shows that cholesterol and triglyceride levels are similar whether people fast or not.

The experts represent the European Atherosclerosis Society (EAS) and the European Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (EFLM) joint consensus initiative.

They refer to new research from Denmark, Canada, and the United States that included over 300,000 people and found it is not necessary to have an empty stomach to check cholesterol levels.

Apart from Denmark, all countries require that patients fast for at least 8 hours before checking their cholesterol and triglyceride levels - referred to as "lipid profile." In Denmark, non-fasting blood sampling has been in use since 2009.

Read more: Fasting no longer necessary before cholesterol test

Researchers say fasting before a cholesterol test is unnecessary.

Source: medicalnewstoday