Dr. Briffa posted an article on his blog today titled Scientists appear reluctant to admit that a serious blow has been dealt to the cholesterol hypothesis regarding this study.

First, a comment on the opening line of the Forbes article.

The link between high cholesterol and heart disease is clear to most in the medical community, but a new British study finds the connection between cholesterol levels and stroke is a bit more murky.

Is it really clear or is it a hypothesis with no scientific justification that is universally accepted because the medical community hasn’t taken the time to really delve into it? If you start with the wrong premises, you end up with the wrong answers. Anyway, what was found is that lowering cholesterol reduces heart attack risk, but not stroke risk.

And in the 70- to 89-year-old age group, higher cholesterol levels were actually associated with a lower stroke death rate, particularly for people with a systolic blood pressure (the top number in a reading) above 145 mm/Hg — a finding that left Lewington puzzled.

“Maybe we’re not measuring the right thing,” she said. “Maybe it’s more complicated than that.”

Bingo! It’s way more complicated than that. But we like to reduce things to a very simple mechanism so lay people can understand it. Enter cholesterol. Here’s a hint: It’s not the cholesterol causing the problems!

And now Dr. Briffa:

So, what’s going on here? Well, just applying a simple deduction for a moment, if strokes are not caused by raised cholesterol, but statin drugs (which reduce cholesterol) reduce risk, is it not possible that statins reduce stroke risk through a mechanism other than cholesterol reduction. Before anyone starts nominating me for a Nobel prize, can I just point out that is well established that statins have a number of effects in the body, which include a blood-thinning effect. Just this effect alone would be expected to reduce the risk of stroke.

Dr. Briffa goes on to talk about the conflicts of interest present on the “writing committee”. It’s interesting stuff indeed.

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Tags: cholesterol, heart disease, pharmaceuticals, statins