A large study conducted around the world shows that cholesterol levels are starting to drop in Europe and North America. Conversely, they continue to rise sharply in many Asian countries.
Cholesterol is a lipid (a fat) that circulates in our blood and performs many cellular functions within our body. It is mainly produced by our liver, although part of it comes from our diet (about a third).
Note that there is only one cholesterol, but two transport systems in the blood, via proteins. A distinction must then be made between HDL (High Density Lipoproteins), which recover excess cholesterol and bring it back to the liver to be eliminated, and LDL (Low Density Lipoproteins), which transport cholesterol from the liver to all the cells. Here, cholesterol can then accumulate and thus contribute to the formation of plaques which gradually clog the arteries and increase the risk of heart attack or stroke.
That being said, as part of a large study published in Nature , hundreds of researchers analyzed data from 102 million people from 200 countries , examining their cholesterol levels between 1980 and 2018 .
According to this work, total and non-HDL cholesterol levels appear to have decreased considerably in recent decades in high-income countries . The researchers mainly refer to the countries of North-West Europe, North America and Australasia. The largest declines were seen in Belgium and Iceland.
Conversely, these same cholesterol levels have increased significantly in low- and middle-income countries, particularly in East and Central Asia. Southeast. The largest increases in non-HDL cholesterol since 1980 have been seen in the Tokelau archipelago, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and China. In 1980, the latter country had some of the lowest levels of non-HDL cholesterol in the world.
Several factors would obviously explain these trends, from changing diets to access to medicines.
In countries where cholesterol is falling, for example, saturated fats have gradually been replaced by unsaturated fats. Since the 1990s, these same populations have also taken more statins – drugs that help lower blood cholesterol levels.
Conversely, the countries showing an increase are those whose populations have for several years been consuming more and more meat, dairy products, refined carbohydrates and Palm oil. On the other hand, statin consumption has remained low.
“ For the first time ever, the highest levels of non-HDL cholesterol are found outside of the western world ” , underlines Majid Ezzati, of Imperial College London. “In other words, we need to globalize diet pricing and regulation policies now . We also need to prepare health systems to treat those in need with effective medicines. These approaches, he assures, could help avoid millions of deaths attributed to cholesterol in the new regions concerned ” .
