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from the everything-eventually-kills-you dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
It has been accepted wisdom for many years that the more good cholesterol people have in their blood, the better. But the good cholesterol, also known as HDL, might not be as good as we think.
In any case, the results of a new study from the University of Copenhagen seriously contradict the assumption that high levels of HDL in the blood are only a good thing. The researchers have shown that people with extremely high levels of good cholesterol have a higher mortality rate than people with normal levels. For men with extremely high levels, the mortality rate was 106 per cent higher than for the normal group. For women with extremely high levels, the mortality rate was 68 per cent higher.
"These results radically change the way we understand 'good' cholesterol. Doctors like myself have been used to congratulating patients who had a very high level of HDL in their blood. But we should no longer do so, as this study shows a dramatically higher mortality rate," says Børge Nordestgaard, Professor at the Department of Clinical Medicine and one of the authors of the study.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @06:51AM (3 children)
This type of situation is automatically generated by NHST... We've been warned since the 1960s that this was happening...
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @07:46AM (2 children)
Even earlier than that:
"We are quite in danger of sending highly trained and highly intelligent young men out into the world with tables of erroneous numbers under their arms, and with a dense fog in the place where their brains ought to be. In this century, of course, they will be working on guided missiles and advising the medical profession on the control of disease, and there is no limit to the extent to which they could impede every sort of national effort"
-Fisher, R N (1958). "The Nature of Probability". Centennial Review. 2: 261–274.
Once people admit that this is the greatest threat to science (not bible thumpers, the pope, or any of the usual boogeymen), we may be able to fix it. From what I see we are still far away from hitting bottom though.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Thursday August 24 2017, @12:45PM (1 child)
I disagree. NHST abuse is merely a symptom. The real problem is that there is a disconnect between research and the consequences of that research. Too often, the point of research is to acquire funding or status rather than to come up with accurate results that can improve our knowledge of the world or better our existence. In that light, NHST abuse is easier to do than real research.
And this is an insidious problem. After all, one of the more valued forms of research is so-called "blue sky" research which is devoted to areas of knowledge which supposedly don't have immediate application. It's very easy to warp that to become research that never has application, but which spends funding just as well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @02:42PM
Well if people think that *eventually* research should lead to repeatable procedures and predictions about the future, it would be a big improvement over today. Right now people think if p [less than] 0.05 there is 95% chance the explanation is correct.
Get rid of all that and instead go with " 9/10 labs were able to get the same result", and "the theory predicted this would happen on this date and it was only a few days off", etc and we will reap simply massive benefits. All this is, is going back to science before the NHST scam took root.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @07:34AM (1 child)
Not just HDL, the typical Western diet has too much of everything. Fine-tuning one component is retarded. Skipping dessert isn't healthy when you're eating 2 mains with buttered bread and sweet potato fries, waffles and maple syrup to the side. Yeah I think it was the HDL, bro.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @02:27PM
I wish they'd stop making this stuff up. The amount of cholesterol a person eats has very little to do with how much you get in your blood stream and the amount you have in your bloodstream is a poor predictor of anything meaningful.
Cholesterol itself isn't usually an issue unless it's hanging out in the bloodstream long enough to get damaged or allowed to collect on the artery walls to the point where it starts to reduce the blood flow. Simply having high levels of cholesterol doesn't mean anything in particular for the average person.
Now if they establish a causal relationship between the cholesterol and the mortality rates and establish a plausible explanation, that would be something to take seriously. The only meaningful takeaway here is that you shouldn't be aiming for the highest possible levels of HDL. But, how many of those folks have high levels because they've been told to cut back massively on their LDLs or taken medications that reduce the LDLs without doing anything about the HDLS?
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday August 24 2017, @07:37AM (2 children)
What part of that is "excessive"?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 24 2017, @08:01AM
The "rate" in "mortality rate" was considered as excessive and, as such, eliminated for TFT(itle).
One can only hope that eliminating the excess cholesterol would be that easier.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @01:30PM
Reading is hard!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @07:37AM (5 children)
Sounds like the "scientific consensus" was wrong!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @08:03AM
"Scientific consensus" in this case, is bought and handsomely paid for.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statin#Society_and_culture [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @08:25AM (2 children)
It's always wrong, just a little bit less wrong today than yesterday. And that's the point and what makes it better than any alternatives.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @11:42AM
In this case, it would have been better to ignore the consensus than accept it. Clearly, following the consensus was not the best alternative. Are you crazy?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @11:57AM
The first is correct, the second is not necessarily true. There is nothing stopping people from digging into a failed idea/concept/theory and getting a worse and worse understanding for decades. Sometimes you need to backtrack, especially if they haven't been careful about replications and making/checking precise predictions (pretty much all of biomed, psych, sociology, education research, etc are in this danger).
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday August 24 2017, @05:47PM
It looks to me like someone isn't very good at statistics and the fact that not everyone is in the middle of the bell curve. For example, my grandmother outlived five doctors who all told her if she didn't get her cholesterol down she'd die. She didn't get the cholesterol down and finally did die, at the age of 99 when she fell and broke her hip. Her brother had started smoking at age 12, quit at 82 and died at 92.
That's one of the many problems with too small a sample size, your entire study may be made from outliers so your data are garbage.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Thursday August 24 2017, @09:08AM (8 children)
From the Fing Journal Article
> with both extreme high and low concentrations [of HDL] being associated with high all-cause mortality risk.
Further
> the multifactorially adjusted hazard ratios for all-cause mortality were 1.36 (95% CI: 1.09–1.70) for men with HDL cholesterol of 2.5–2.99 mmol/L (97–115 mg/dL)
> and 2.06 (1.44–2.95) for men with HDL cholesterol ≥3.0 mmol/L (116 mg/dL)
i.e. there is about a 30 % probability that NULL hypothesis is correct (and there is no result).
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Thursday August 24 2017, @09:17AM (3 children)
And there is a chance the excessive *anything* will be bad for you.
The difficulty is finding out what is 'excessive' (experimenting *can* be fun, but is often fatal, but then, so is life (so far))
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 24 2017, @11:03AM (2 children)
I can tell, for sure, 100% HDL flowing in your veins and arteries is fatal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Thursday August 24 2017, @11:28AM (1 child)
Stop injecting avocado.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday August 24 2017, @04:09PM
Yeah he'll NEVER be able to afford a house like that!
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2, Informative) by shrewdsheep on Thursday August 24 2017, @11:11AM (2 children)
Not sure where you get the 30% from. If a confidence interval does not cover a reference value (1 in this case), there is at most a 5% chance that the data we see was produced under the reference value (very roughly). For the CI (1.44-2.95) the p-value is probably on the order of 10E-3.
Also, the p-value does not translate into a probability that the null hypothesis is correct. Turn it around: if the null hypothesis is true, we have a X% chance (X being the p-value) of observing the data we do or something "more extreme". If X is small (for some definition of small) we consider the combination of null hypothesis and data too unlikely. Let us look for a better hypothesis (and therefore we reject the current null hypothesis).
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday August 24 2017, @11:52AM
You are right, I screwed up my statistics.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @11:54AM
No, this is still transposing the conditional. P(Chance|Data) != P(Data|Chance), just like P(Clouds|Rain) != P(Rain|Clouds). Is the latter true even "very roughly"? No.
You seem to be getting at it with your later sentences but have perhaps not really internalized the consequences of this understanding yet. Also, whose hypothesis was it that measured HDL levels have exactly zero correlation with reported mortality rates? Seems pretty implausible to me...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @11:52AM
The NULL hypothesis still contradicts "more HDL is better".
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @09:20AM (1 child)
I am not an MD, but this is an attempt to reconstruct what could be happening in bloodsteam:
LDL is some sort of packaging for transporting oils/fats through bloodstream in a tidy manner. If you have too much of that, it may be because there is a construction going on (cell membranes need fats) or you are storing fat (gaining weight) or burning fat (loosing weight).
Excessive LDL is bad for your blood vessel walls (when it crystallizes while deposited on, or inside, them, they rupture).
It was explained to me that HDL acts as a sort of mop for used up LDL. Once HDL and LDL join, they are captured in the liver and destroyed. I don't understand why LDL can't be reused and has to be recycled instead.
If you have low HDL level and normal LDL level, that could mean that you are generating too much LDL and your normal HDL production is barely compensating that, in other words, you keep LDL level inside the limits, but only thanks to burning through too much HDL.
However, if you get too high HDL level, I suppose something is wrong in the process: either too much HDL is created, or for some reason it is not binding LDL anymore, or it is not being destroyed at usual rate.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday August 24 2017, @05:52PM
...or burning fat (loosing weight).
I usually cringe at that misspelling, but had to grin this time. Losing something is accidental, loosing something is on purpose ("Loose the hounds").
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Thursday August 24 2017, @11:14AM
Μηδὲν ἄγαν
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @01:07PM (2 children)
become immortal
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Thursday August 24 2017, @02:42PM (1 child)
Does that work for pigs?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @03:40PM
Only if you feed them human flesh after midnight.