Browse evidence-based analysis of health-related claims and assertions
Swapping 2% of your diet’s bad fats (trans fats) for healthy oils like soybean or corn oil lowers your cholesterol ratio more than swapping them for bread or pasta.
Quantitative
When you swap out 5% of the fat in your diet from butter or meat to oils like sunflower or fish oil, your 'bad' cholesterol goes down by about 20 mg/dL.
Even though statins might slightly raise the risk of a rare type of bleeding stroke, this tiny risk is more than canceled out by the big drop in common clot-based strokes and heart attacks.
While statins might slightly increase the chance of getting diabetes, that tiny risk is far outweighed by the big drop in heart attacks and strokes.
Statins lower the risk of the most common type of stroke — caused by blocked arteries — by about one-fifth, no matter how low or high a person’s overall heart disease risk is.
Causal
Even people with very low risk of heart disease get just as much protection from statins as people at high risk — the lower your risk, the more you benefit per unit of cholesterol lowered.
Taking statins does not make you more likely to get cancer or die from cancer, even if your cholesterol is already very low.
For people without prior heart disease, taking statins lowers their risk of dying from heart problems and even from any cause, without increasing the risk of dying from other reasons like cancer or accidents.
Statins lower the risk of stroke by about a quarter in low-risk people, just as effectively as they do in people who already have heart disease.
People at low risk of heart disease who take statins are much less likely to need procedures like stents or bypass surgery to open blocked arteries.
Statins cut the risk of heart attacks by nearly half in low-risk people by lowering bad cholesterol, even if they’ve never had heart trouble before.
For every 1,000 low-risk people who take statins to lower their bad cholesterol by 1 mmol/L, about 11 will avoid a heart attack, stroke, or heart surgery over five years — a benefit much bigger than the small risks of side effects.
Taking statins to lower bad cholesterol by a specific amount cuts the chance of heart attacks, strokes, and needed heart surgeries by about one-fifth, even in people who have never had heart problems and are considered low risk.
The cells that make both IL-17 and IFN-γ actually went down after stress — meaning the IL-17 causing damage probably came from cells that were already making it, not new ones being created.
The mice lost a little weight from the stress, but not more than they did from just eating a fatty diet — so the plaque bursts weren’t caused by extreme sickness or starvation.
Before the plaque actually burst, 8 out of 10 had bleeding inside them — meaning bleeding happens before the cap breaks, and might be a warning sign.
Descriptive
Over time, the strong fibrous cap covering the fatty core in the artery got much thinner compared to the size of the fatty core — making the plaque more likely to burst, like a weak roof over a big hole.
Even though the mice had fatty plaques and they burst, their blood fat levels didn’t change — meaning the rupture wasn’t caused by worse cholesterol, but by something else, like immune activity.
After the plaque burst, the number of immune cells that calm down inflammation went up — like the body’s way of trying to fix the damage after the explosion.
In the artery walls where plaques burst, the genes that make Th17 and Th1 immune cells were turned way up — showing the immune system was actively working right at the site of damage.
When scientists added IL-17 to artery muscle cells in a dish, the cells started dying off in large numbers — especially at higher doses — which could explain how plaques get weak and burst.
Mechanistic
When the plaques burst in the mice, a chemical called IL-17 showed up in high amounts in their blood and right where the plaque broke — like a warning signal at the scene of the damage.
When mice with fatty arteries were stressed, the number of a specific type of immune cell called Th17 went up dramatically — but another type, Th1, stayed the same, suggesting Th17 might be special in causing artery damage.
In mice with fatty artery buildup, a quick burst of stress (like cold, a toxin, and a blood pressure drug) caused 3 out of 4 fragile plaques to burst, but only if the plaque was already weak — strong plaques didn’t break.