The graduate student I referred to had cholesterol counts in the 700's (for a thin, relatively "fit" student in his late 20's), when most healthy people have cholesterol counts in the 100-200 range. I don't know if your family has this particular version of the problem. Re the use of "microscopic": I wasn't being particularly scientific. However, the incidence of this particular type of problem is low enough that even though it is devastating to the particular people who have it, it cannot be considered a significant cause of heart disease in the general population. For example, smoking would be several orders of magnitude more important. A Caltech friend of mine (who shall remain nameless) has an unproven theory that much of the heart disease epidemic of the last century was caused by some version of an undiagnosed bacterial disease that just happened to coincide with the increase in smoking, and that much of the progress against heart disease was caused by antibiotics used for totally different purposes. Given the success of antibiotics against stomach ulcers, which were previously unlinked to bacteria, he may have a point. At 04:20 PM 2/13/2015, Dan Asimov wrote:
On Feb 13, 2015, at 3:29 PM, Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com> wrote:
There is a microscopic fraction of humans that have a distinct genetic problem that causes incredibly high cholesterol levels. One of my graduate students at the University of Rochester in the early 1980's was such a person, and he died in his 30's of heart disease. There is nothing to be learned from these people that in any way applies to the rest of the population as a whole.
Unfortunately, this runs in my family. Fortunately, not my direct ancestors.
(But one great-aunt's husband, his two sons, and a daughter -- all of whom I was very fond of -- each died by age 45. One son had two children, of whom the one has the disorder . . . but nowadays it can be diagnosed and treated with medicines, and he's doing fine.)
Hmm, maybe the fraction is not so microscopic after all, just a lot of undiagnosed people?