LDL-C Does Not Cause Cardiovascular Disease: A Comprehensive Review (2018)
Cardiovascular geneticist&#x2F;statistician and physician-in-training here: This is a completely bogus and scientifically illiterate review. This small group of people in Sweden keep publishing crap like this and it&#x27;s frankly kind of annoying.<p>It&#x27;s hard to even know where to start with the overwhelming amount of evidence that elevated levels of LDL cholesterol causes cardiovascular disease.<p>Since I&#x27;m a geneticist, I&#x27;ll point out just a handful of strong genetics-guided experiments:<p>1) Familial hypercholesterolemia - Mutations in the LDLR Gene causing basically only elevated LDL lead to 10x increased odds for coronary artery disease<p>2) PCSK9 inhibitors - essentially only reduce LDL concentration, dramatically reduce risk<p>3) Mendelian randomization techniques - statistical causal inference in massive datasets shows pretty conclusively LDL increases CVD<p>Yes, LDL cholesterol causes CVD. Yes, there are other factors as well (especially hemodynamics and chronic inflammation).