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Scientists find gene for high cholesterol in blood |
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Scientists at the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research (SFBR) in San Antonio have found a gene that causes high levels of bad cholesterol to accumulate in the blood as a result of a high-cholesterol diet.
Researchers studied a strain of laboratory opossums developed at SFBR that has normal blood levels of “bad” low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol when fed a standard low-cholesterol diet, but extremely elevated levels of LDL cholesterol when fed a high-cholesterol diet. These high-responding opossums are used to identify the genes and the underlying mechanisms that control response to dietary cholesterol.
“This research will improve our understanding of cholesterol metabolism and may shed light on why some people have high levels of bad cholesterol in blood while others do not when they consume cholesterol-enriched diets,” said John L. VandeBerg, Ph.D., SFBR’s chief scientific officer and senior author on the paper. Published in the October issue of the Journal of Lipid Research, the work was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Robert J. Kleberg, Jr. and Helen C. Kleberg Foundation.
Article
published by health.am/cholesterol/ |
