Low Cholesterol Could Be Sign Of Cancer In Men Especially

Low total cholesterol may be a sign of cancer according to researchers.

Previously, some medical experts had thought that low cholesterol may have been a cause.  According to researchers reporting this week, findings suggest that men who have low cholesterol actually have a lower risk of developing high-risk prostate cancer.

There were some 1.4 million cancer cases in the United States last year according to the American Association for Critical Illness Insurance.  The cost of caring for medical conditions caused over 60 percent of the 1.5 million Americans to declare bankruptcy. 

A study of more than 5,000 U.S. men conducted by Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore found a link between low cholesterol and a lower risk of high-grade prostate cancer among men over age 55.

The researchers report that if men had total cholesterol of less than 200 milligrams/deciliter, they had a nearly 60 percent lower risk of developing high-grade prostate cancer, the riskiest kind. 

It is not clear whether taking cholesterol-lowering statin drugs might help men with prostate cancer. That would need to be studied, the medical experts noted.  The study was reported in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. 

For years, researchers had noticed that people who have lower total cholesterol -- a combination of both low-density lipoprotein or LDL, the "bad" kind, and high-density lipoprotein or HDL, the "good" kind -- appeared more likely to have certain types of cancers than other people. 

They report this finding was worrisome because having low cholesterol, and particularly low levels of "bad" LDL cholesterol, has been shown to protect against heart attacks and strokes. 

An expert at the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, said in a statement, "The study affirms that lower total cholesterol may be caused by undiagnosed cancer.  In terms of a public health message, we found that higher levels of 'good' cholesterol seem to be protective for all cancers." 

An 18-year study of nearly 30,000 Finnish male smokers, the largest and longest of its kind, found that over the nearly two decades some 7,545 men developed cancer.  The men with lower total cholesterol levels -- below 230 milligrams/deciliter -- had an 18 percent higher risk of cancer overall. 

But, when the researchers excluded cancers that occurred in the first nine years of the study, this risk disappears.  The findings the researchers notes support the idea that the lower serum total cholesterol level we detected as a possible cancer risk factor may actually have been the result of undiagnosed cancers.