Low blood cholesterol levels reduces the risk of not only heart disease but also cancer.
The findings should help ease longstanding fears that low cholesterol is associated with an increased risk of cancer, said Dr. Demetrius Albanes, a senior investigator at the U.S. National Cancer Institute, and an author of one of two reports in the November issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention.
“These results should help dispel any lingering thoughts that low cholesterol may help cause cancer,” said Eric Jacobs, strategic director of pharmacoepidemiology at the American Cancer Society, who wrote an accompanying editorial.
Data from studies that have followed more than 29,000 Finnish men over 18 years shows two reasons for concern that low cholesterol levels increase the risk of cancer and the reason why people fear it is not acceptable.
Generally recommended cholesterol levels below 200 milligrams per deciliter is associated with a 18 percent higher risk of cancer overall, but increased the risk only applies to the cases diagnosed in the early years of the study.These findings support the notion that low cholesterol levels are the result of undiagnosed cancer.
And higher levels of HDL cholesterol, the “good” as it protects the coronary arteries, which is associated with the risk 14 percent lower than all types of cancer in the entire length of the study.
In addition, data on more than 5,500 men enrolled in the Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial showed that those with cholesterol levels lower than 200 has a 59 percent lower risk of developing the most dangerous form of cancer, said a second report in the same journal issue.
Low cholesterol levels are more likely to be seen in men who have prostate cancer of high Gleason score, the size of the prostate gland disorders normal structure caused by malignancy, the study found. Gleason prostate cancer with the highest score is considered as the most difficult to treat.

Cholesterol levels had no significant effect on the overall incidence of prostate cancer in the study, said study leader Elizabeth Platz, co-director of cancer prevention and control program at Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center.

But the relationship between low cholesterol levels and reduce the incidence of aggressive disease “is well known that the reduction is not often seen for prostate cancer,” he said.
It is still not known whether statins, which help prevent heart disease by lowering levels of “bad” LDL cholesterol, may reduce the risk of cancer, Albanes said.
“We do not collect detailed information on cholesterol-lowering efforts,” said Albanes. “Maybe it’s too early to read from our findings that the effort to actively lower cholesterol levels can achieve the benefits of cancer. Our results do not speak at that time.”
However, “the evidence continues to mount that the use of statins is inversely correlated with the risk of prostate cancer,” said Platz.
But both agreed that further research is needed to prove both points and identify the molecular mechanisms behind the association.