Cholesterol Overtreatment
Current medical practice often pursues aggressive LDL targets below 70 mg/dL or below 55 mg/dL in high-risk patients. Clinical trials supporting current cholesterol targets did not study patients over age 80 and 85, despite high-dose stati…
1 sources - 5 claims
Current medical practice often pursues aggressive LDL targets below 70 mg/dL or below 55 mg/dL in high-risk patients. Clinical trials supporting current cholesterol targets did not study patients over age 80 and 85, despite high-dose statin use in those groups. Cholesterol is essential to human physiology rather than being a toxin. Cholesterol overtreatment in elderly patients can result from focusing on lowering cholesterol numbers without considering harms of aggressive reduction. Very low cholesterol levels are linked in the article to cognitive decline, though the risk is said to receive little discussion.