Low serum cholesterol, cancer and other noncardiovascular disorders.
Level 5 - mechanism / opinion, no new human data
Narrative review synthesizing observational and trial evidence without systematic review methodology.
PubMed 1632854 · doi:10.1016/0021-9150(92)90182-g
What was done
The author reviewed evidence from ecological comparisons, cross-cultural studies, prospective epidemiological cohort studies, and intervention trials to determine whether low serum cholesterol or cholesterol reduction via diet or drugs increases the risk of mortality from noncardiovascular disorders, specifically cancer.
What was found
The abstract reports no numerical values, effect sizes, or counts. It reports no indication of a cause-and-effect association between low or lowered serum cholesterol and cancer risk, except possibly at very low cholesterol levels. An inverse relationship between serum cholesterol and noncardiovascular, non-cancer mortality was noted, though judged unlikely to be causal.
Why it matters
This synthesis supports existing clinical and public health guidelines, indicating that strategies to lower elevated serum cholesterol for coronary heart disease prevention do not need modification due to noncardiovascular mortality concerns.
Limits
The abstract provides no quantitative data, search strategy, or study count. As a narrative review, it is prone to selection bias and lacks formal risk-of-bias assessment or meta-analytic pooling. Confounding underlying the inverse association between cholesterol and noncardiovascular non-cancer deaths remains unmeasured.
Cited by
- supports Low cholesterol levels are associated with an increased incidence of cancer.