United States: As per the latest CDC report, approximately one in ten US adults suffers from high cholesterol in the arteries.
More about the news
Data from 2021 through 2023 indicated that 11.3 percent of adults have high total cholesterol, and this has not decreased since cholesterol-lowering medications statins came into the market in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
According to Margaret Carroll, the team lead of the CDC researchers, “High total cholesterol prevalence declined from 1999-2000 to 2013-2014 and then did not change significantly” in the years since then.
The experts also pointed out that there was not much disparity in high total cholesterol prevalence in men (10.6 %) and women (11.9%).
What more are the experts stating?
The new data were obtained from a massive regular federal health check on Americans.
In addition to fewer adults having rates of unhealthy total cholesterol that have declined over the past few decades in the US, Carroll and his team also documented that relatively fewer adults have low blood levels of the measure of HDL “good” cholesterol than several decades ago.
According to the report, from 2021 to 2023, 13.8 percent of all US adults had unhealthily low levels of this form of healthy cholesterol in the bloodstream.
That is a much-improved situation compared to the 22.2 percent rate reported in the 2007-2008 financial year, according to the CDC.
However, there were certain irregularities in terms of gender and age when it came to cholesterol levels.
To take as an example, 16.7 percent of the adults between the ages of 40 and 59 had high total cholesterol, according to the report, and as the ages shifted to their 60s and to their ‘Medicare years’, people with high cholesterol levels reduced to 11.3 percent.
When looking at the prevalence of low levels of HDL, it was even higher in men than in women: 21.5 percent and 6.6 percent, respectively.
That’s not very shocking, as it was discovered earlier that estrogens raise levels of HDL cholesterol, which is beneficial to health.
As Dr. Leslie Cho, the cardiologist, mentioned, “When estrogen levels decline, levels of LDL cholesterol increase and levels of HDL cholesterol decrease,” US News reported.
“That can lead to a buildup of fat and cholesterol in the arteries that contributes to heart attack and stroke,” Cho added.
In the report, high total cholesterol was identified as a blood level of total cholesterol of 240mg/dL or above.