A new paper published online in The Lancet challenges the assumption that raising a person’s HDL -- the so-called “good cholesterol” -- will necessarily lower the risk of a heart attack. The new research underscores the value of using genetic approaches to test biological hypotheses about human disease prior to developing specific drugs. A team led by researchers from the Broad Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) explored naturally occurring genetic variations in humans to test the connection between HDL levels and heart attack. By studying the genes of roughly 170,000 individuals, the team discovered that, when examined together, the 15 HDL-raising variants they tested do not reduce the risk of heart attack.
