Lipoproteins

Published on July 31, 2024   65 min

A selection of talks on Physiology & Anatomy

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0:00
I'd like to introduce myself. I'm Arnold von Eckardstein, and I have been invited to give an overview about lipoproteins and my normal task is to work at the University Hospital of Zurich and I'm a specialist in laboratory medicine. So I will also touch a bit about the analysis of lipoproteins in the laboratory and my research specialty is lipoproteins and atherosclerosis. That's probably the reason why I've been asked to give this presentation.
0:33
The next slide shows you the rationale why I think it is important for medical students or students in biomedical sciences to understand the structure, function and metabolism of lipoproteins. The most important medical reason is that lipoproteins, especially APoB containing lipoproteins like LDL, are an important causal risk factor in atherosclerosis. You see here already the arguments that I will bring forward at the end of my presentation again. We know that high LDL-cholesterol levels increase the risk of myocardial infarction. We know from genetic studies that genetic reasons of high LDL-cholesterol also increase the risk of myocardial infarction, and people who have genetically determined low levels of LDL-cholesterol have a low level risk of atherosclerosis. If we go for trials, all drugs that lower LDL-cholesterol or also dietary interventions that lower LDL-cholesterol are shown to reduce the risk of myocardial infarction. Finally, in animal experiments, if you want to model atherosclerosis, it's not possible to do this without inducing hypercholesterolemia in these animals. It's very clear LDL-cholesterol and also other lipoproteins are causal risk factors of atherosclerosis and they are treatable risk factors and it's important to understand the rationale behind that.

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