Raising HDL, widely known as good cholesterol, for years has been thought to protect against heart attack and stroke. But a big new study published Monday found little evidence it does. The finding upends the advice doctors have been giving millions of patients — and helps explain why the drug industry has failed time and again, despite billions in investment, to develop a drug that cuts deaths from heart disease by boosting HDL levels. “When you explain [cholesterol levels] to patients, it’s very easy to say one number’s bad and the other number’s good,” said a cardiologist at Canada’s Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences and lead author of the study.
But it turns out that HDL is associated with poor health generally and does not seem to affect cardiovascular risk. These pricey cholesterol drugs aren’t selling. And that has the biotech industry sweating. Instead, it dipped, then…
