The bad news is that too many of those who have dangerously high levels of LDL cholesterol don’t know it, said study author Dr. Elena V. Kuklina, an epidemiologist and senior service fellow at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Her research is published in the Nov. 18 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
“In the group with high LDL cholesterol, 60 percent of these people do not know they have this condition,” Kuklina said. “They are in two major groups — those who have never been screened, and those who have been screened but not diagnosed.”
It is not as easy to test for LDL, rather than total blood cholesterol levels, including “good” HDL, Kuklina said. An LDL test requires fasting for the previous eight hours, “and if you are not prepared for this test, it is not going to be correct,” she said. But testing someone and then not informing that person of a dangerously high LDL cholesterol level is not easy to explain, she said.
Read more…