Genetic Study Questions HDL Levels and the Risk of MI

More bad news for biomarkers.

Therapies that boost HDL-cholesterol levels are currently viewed as a potential treatment to close down the residual risk of aggressively treated patients, but data from a new study throw cold water on the putative benefits of raising HDL-cholesterol levels to reduce the risk of MI.

Investigators report that a genetic variant that substantially raises HDL-cholesterol levels did not alter the risk of MI, whereas genetic polymorphisms related to plasma LDL-cholesterol were consistently associated with an increased risk of MI.

"These results challenge several established views about plasma HDL cholesterol," write Dr Benjamin Voight (University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia) and colleagues in a report published online May 16, 2012 in the Lancet. "First, these data question the concept that raising plasma HDL cholesterol should uniformly translate into reduction in risk of myocardial infarction. . . . Second, these findings emphasize the potential limitation of plasma HDL cholesterol as a surrogate measure for risk of myocardial infarction in intervention trials."

Still think they have any idea what they are talking about?