Causal link between low cholesterol and cancer is unlikely

BMJ 1995;311:1438-1439 (25 November)

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Causal link between low cholesterol and cancer is unlikely

EDITOR,--Goya Wannamethee and colleagues report that very lowtotal cholesterol concentrations (<4.8 mmol/l) are associatedwith an excess risk of cancer and other non-cardiovascular diseases,which seems to be due to preclinical cancer, chronic ill health,smoking, and heavy drinking.¹ Yet even patients with clinicallyovert cancer rarely have such low cholesterol concentrations.We studied the cholesterol concentrations in 200 consecutivepatients with various malignancies (83 men, mean (SD) age 62.6(1.5) years; 117 women, mean age 63.7 (1.3) years). Thirty fiveof them had lymphoma, nine leukaemia, 15 bronchioalveolar carcinoma,32 breast cancer, 28 urogenital carcinoma, 19 gastric carcinoma,22 cancer of the colon, and 40 other carcinomas.

Only in the 51 men with weight loss (mean weight loss 8.0 (0.9)kg) was the mean cholesterol concentration (4.68 (0.21) mmol/l)lower than Wannamethee and colleagues' limit of 4.8 mmol/l.The cholesterol concentration was 5.50 (0.35) mmol/l in the32 . . . [Full text of this article]

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Low serum total cholesterol concentrations and mortality in middle aged British men: Goya Wannamethee, A Gerald Shaper, Peter H Whincup, and Mary Walker
BMJ 1995 311: 409-413. [Abstract] [Full Text]