Should medical science ignore the past?

doi:10.1136/bmj.a1681

Published 16 September 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a1681
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a1681

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Hypercholesterolaemia

Should medical science ignore the past?

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

For their article on hypercholesterolaemia and its managementBhatnagar et al selected reviews only if they included "extensiverecent references,"¹ thereby missing important knowledge fromthe past [full list of references in rapid response].² Let meelaborate:

No association between cholesterol and degree of atherosclerosishas been found in postmortem studies of unselected individuals
High cholesterol is not a risk factor for women, patientswithrenal failure, diabetic patients, or old people³
Oldpeople with high cholesterol live longer than those withlowcholesterol³
In cohorts of people with familial hypercholesterolaemia,cholesterolis not associated with the incidence or prevalenceof cardiovasculardisease, and their average life span is similarto other people’s
No randomised, controlled, unifactorial,dietary, cholesterollowering trial has ever succeeded in loweringcoronary or totalmortality⁴
No clinical or angiographic trialhas found exposure-responsebetween individual degree of cholesterollowering and outcome³
More than 20 cohort . . . [Full text of this article]

Uffe Ravnskov, independent researcher¹

¹ Magle Stora Kyrkogata 9, 22350 Lund, Sweden

ravnskov@tele2.se

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