Important news on colorectal cancer symptoms. If you have high HDL cholesterol levels (good cholesterol), you might also have a reduced risk of colorectol cancer according to a new study.
If future work confirms this finding, those with low HDL (good) cholesterol levels should make changes to cut their chances of developing of colon cancer according to researchers.
Doctors know that lowering bad (LDL) and increasing the good (HDL) cholesterol lowers your risk of heart disease. This work gives you yet another reason to watch those numbers - staying free of dangerous colon cancer.
In this work, the experts compared 1,238 subjects with colorectal cancer to the same number of healthy controls. Of the participants who had cancer - just under 800 had colon cancer, with around 450 diagnosed with rectal cancer.
The team looked at blood samples and diet-lifestyle questionnaires filled out by the participants and found that subjects with elevated levels of HDL (good) cholesterol, along with another blood fat known as apolipoprotein A (apoA), had the lowest chance of developing cancer of the colon. There was no impact on rectal cancer rates.
For every 16.6 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dl) rise in good cholesterol, colon cancer risk was reduced by 22%, while a 32% increase in apoA brought the chances of colon cancer down by 18%. For a small number of participants followed for over two years, only the HDL levels were associated with a reduced risk of cancer of the colon.
This particular relationship is independent of other markers in blood that are tied to cancer. Things like inflammation, insulin resistance and free radicals. But is it the HDL cholesterol or some other biological factor that comes with good cholesterol that's responsible for the reduction in risk?
The reduced follow up period, only 3.6 years, is considered a limitation of the research, though the study has been well designed according to experts who had no part in the research, and is the largest ever of good cholesterol and risk of cancer of the colon.
Cancer of the colon starts in the large intestine (known medically as the colon) or at the end of the colon, the rectum. The American Cancer Society points out that colorectal cancer is a leading cause of cancer related deaths in the U.S.
Nearly all colon cancers start out as benign polyps that develop into cancer over time. The good news is that finding the cancer early, at the polyp stage when it's small and hasn't had chance to spread, is a key to a complete cure.
The team speculates that good cholesterol's anti-inflammatory properties might be the reason for the finding, but understand that more work is needed. If other studies bear out this finding, it may be that HDL levels become useful in assessing a patient's colon cancer risks.
If you're worried about your own risks of developing colorectal cancer symptoms, the best recommendations are to try and achieve high HDL cholesterol levels by stopping smoking, being more active on a regular basis, get your weight under control and limit your intake of both red/processed meats and alcohol.
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