1 more serious disease detected if high cholesterol

High cholesterol will put you at risk of getting the most common disease in the group that was evaluated by WHO as the fifth leading cause of death.

New research from Emory University and Atlanta Veterans Hospital (USA) finds an additional risk that high cholesterol can give people: early onset of Alzheimer's disease, the most common disease in dementia group (dementia).

High cholesterol foods can make you soon lose your memory - (artwork from the internet)

Alzheimer's is thought to be an early onset when patients are pre-65 years old. Statistics around the world show that early cases account for 5-10% of Alzheimer's cases. Worth mentioning, this disease is spreading but there is no cure. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are currently 50 million people worldwide are suffering from dementia and the number may triple in only three decades. This is also the 5th leading cause of death, while Alzheimer's cases account for 60-80% of cases of dementia.

Scientists evaluated blood and DNA samples from 2,125 people, of whom 654 were diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's. 10% of the volunteer group carrying the APOE gene variant, proved to be closely related to the disease; Another 3% carries 1 in 3 gene variants that increase other risk.

The study, published in the scientific journal JAMA Neurology , found that early onset cases mostly fall in the group of people with "bad" LDL cholesterol levels , regardless of whether they carry the risk gene variant or not. .

This result coincides with a work published in 2018 in the University of Cambridge (England) scientific journal Nature Chemistry . This study focuses on the mechanism of the effect of "bad" cholesterol rather than the statistical rate. They found that this type of cholesterol could become a catalyst for amyloid-beta formation in the brain. Amyloid-beta accumulates, killing brain cells as a major factor in Alzheimer's, previous studies have demonstrated.

Amyloid-beta adheres strongly to cholesterol-containing cell membrane, making amyloid-beta clusters easier to form and grow up to 20 times faster than people without high cholesterol.