Too Little of a Bad Thing!

“You can’t be too thin”, the Duchess of Windsor once said. And some physicians have stated: “You can’t have a too low LDL (low-density lipoprotein) cholesterol level”. Well, it seems you can. Dr Huang of the University of Carolina looked at cholesterol levels in Parkinson’s disease patients compared with controls, and found that a low LDL level – just what is needed for cardiovascular protection – is linked to a 3.5 times increase in the likelihood of having Parkinson’s.

Dr Huang studied 124 consecutive Parkinson’s patients at a movement disorder clinic, and 112 unmatched controls (actually, spouses of clinic patients). After making adjustments for age, gender, smoking, and use of cholesterol-lowering drugs, she found that an ideal LDL level in the range of 93 to 114 mg/dL was associated with the highest risk of Parkinson’s. What made the result even more interesting was the finding that use of cholesterol-lowering drugs, such as statins, was linked to a lower risk of Parkinson’s, by about a third.

This finding is clearly just the start of a new area of research that may, possibly, lead to new anti-Parkinson’s medications. In fact, it’s accompanied by another report, from an independent source, showing much the same thing. However, it’s unlikely to alter the prevailing view, that lowering LDL cholesterol to below 100 mg/dL is a good thing.