{"id":234863,"date":"2026-04-09T02:41:37","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T07:41:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/little-used-cholesterol-test-could-prevent-more-heart-attacks-and-strokes"},"modified":"2026-04-09T02:41:37","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T07:41:37","slug":"little-used-cholesterol-test-could-prevent-more-heart-attacks-and-strokes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/little-used-cholesterol-test-could-prevent-more-heart-attacks-and-strokes","title":{"rendered":"Little-used cholesterol test could prevent more heart attacks and strokes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/little-used-cholesterol-test-could-prevent-more-heart-attacks-and-strokes.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A routine blood test taken by millions in the U.S. each year to measure \u201cbad\u201d cholesterol is not the best measure to guide treatment and prevent heart attacks and strokes, suggests a new Northwestern Medicine study <a href=\"https:\/\/jamanetwork.com\/journals\/jama\/fullarticle\/2847303\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in <i>JAMA<\/i>. The study found that another blood test called apolipoprotein B (apoB) outperformed LDL and non-HDL cholesterol in guiding cholesterol-lowering therapy, such as taking statins and other medications.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe found that <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/news\/2025-04-simple-heart-disease-current-standard.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\">apoB testing<\/a> to intensify cholesterol-lowering medication would prevent more heart attacks and strokes than current practice, and that these health benefits were achieved at a cost that represents good value for U.S. health care payers,\u201d said study lead author Ciaran Kohli-Lynch, assistant professor of preventive medicine in the division of epidemiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.<\/p>\n<p>According to Kohli-Lynch, this is the first comprehensive study to show that using apoB testing to guide cholesterol-lowering treatment is cost-effective.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A routine blood test taken by millions in the U.S. each year to measure \u201cbad\u201d cholesterol is not the best measure to guide treatment and prevent heart attacks and strokes, suggests a new Northwestern Medicine study published in JAMA. The study found that another blood test called apolipoprotein B (apoB) outperformed LDL and non-HDL cholesterol [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1495],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-234863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234863\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}