A new blood test found that people with high levels of a type of damaged cholesterol were much more likely to develop metabolic syndrome, putting them at higher risk of heart disease and diabetes, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
"Cholesterol is a fat. What the body does to transport cholesterol around is to encase it into a little particle that has protein on the outside, so that it is soluble," said David Jacobs of the University of Minnesota.
But, Jacobs said, when this casing becomes oxidized, a kind of damage caused by charged particles known as free radicals, it can become embedded in arteries and start clogging them.
"That is the cause of coronary heart disease," said Jacobs, whose study appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
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Now some actual facts
Since cholesterol is insoluble in blood, it is transported in the circulatory system within lipoproteins, complex spherical particles which have an exterior composed mainly of water-soluble proteins; fats and cholesterol are carried internally. There is a large range of lipoproteins within blood, generally called, from larger to smaller size: chylomicrons, very low density lipoprotein (VLDL), intermediate density lipoprotein (IDL), low density lipoprotein (LDL) and high density lipoprotein (HDL). The cholesterol within all the various lipoproteins is identical.