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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Elevated lipid levels (also called hyperlipidemia) appear to significantly impact survival in patients with ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, French researchers have found.
Dr. Vincent Meininger and colleagues found that patients with ALS often have a "hyperlipidemic" profile and survival is better when they have a high ratio of "bad" LDL cholesterol to "good" HDL cholesterol.
"These results," Meininger told Reuters Health, "raise the question of using a fat diet for ALS patients, and to avoid using cholesterol lowering drugs -- mainly statins."
ALS is an invariably fatal disorder of the nervous system that destroys the cells controlling voluntary movement. ALS is sometimes referred to as Lou Gehrig's disease, after the famous baseball player who died of it.
According to a report in the medical journal Neurology, Meininger, of Hopital de la Pitie-Salpetriere, Paris and colleagues studied blood samples from 369 patients with ALS and 286 healthy subjects.
They found that elevated lipid levels, as evidenced by increased blood levels of total cholesterol or "bad" LDL, were twice as common in the ALS patients as it was in controls.
In addition, ALS patients with a low ratio of "bad" LDL to "good" HDL cholesterol had a 35 percent increased risk of death. Median survival in those with the highest ratio was 49.2 months compared with 36.7 months in those with the lowest.
The significance of the findings is not clear, said Meininger, but the relationship "between survival and lipids was previously shown in a mouse model of ALS, with the mice living longer when they are fed a high fat diet.
SOURCE: Neurology March 25, 2008.
