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Response to Ravnskov et al. on saturated fat and CHD

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2011

Jan I. Pedersen ,
Kaare R. Norum ,
Philip T. James ,
Ingeborg A. Brouwer ,
Martijn B. Katan ,
Robert Clarke ,
Ibrahim Elmadfa ,
Penny M. Kris-Etherton ,
Daan Kromhout  and
Barrie M. Margetts
...Show all authors
Jan I. Pedersen
Affiliation:
Department of Nutrition, Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, University of Oslo, POB 1046, Blindern, 0316 Oslo, Norway, email j.i.pedersen@medisin.uio.no
Kaare R. Norum
Affiliation:
Department of Nutrition, Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, University of Oslo, POB 1046, Blindern, 0316 Oslo, Norway, email j.i.pedersen@medisin.uio.no
Philip T. James
Affiliation:
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK
Ingeborg A. Brouwer
Affiliation:
Department of Health Sciences, VU University, 1081 HV, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Martijn B. Katan
Affiliation:
Department of Health Sciences, VU University, 1081 HV, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Robert Clarke
Affiliation:
Clinical Trial Service Unit, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Ibrahim Elmadfa
Affiliation:
Institute of Nutritional Sciences, University of Vienna, 1090 Vienna, Austria
Penny M. Kris-Etherton
Affiliation:
Department of Nutritional Sciences, Penn State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA
Daan Kromhout
Affiliation:
Division of Human Nutrition, Wageningen University, 6700 EV, Wageningen, The Netherlands
Barrie M. Margetts
Affiliation:
School of Medicine, University of Southampton, Southampton General Hospital, Southampton, UK
Ronald P. Mensink
Affiliation:
Department of Human Biology, School for Nutrition, Toxicology and Metabolism, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands
Mike Rayner
Affiliation:
British Heart Foundation Health Promotion Research Group, Department of Public Health, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Matti Uusitupa
Affiliation:
Institute of Public Health and Clinical Nutrition, Clinical Nutrition, Kuopio Campus, University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland
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Abstract

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Type
Letter to the editor
Information
British Journal of Nutrition , Volume 107 , Issue 3 , 14 February 2012 , pp. 458 - 460
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2011

We thank Dr Ravnskov and colleagues(Reference Ravnskov, Diamond and Karatay1) for their interest in our editorial. Ravnskov et al. appear to ignore the large number of controlled metabolic studies relating fatty acid intake to plasma total and LDL-cholesterol as well as the overwhelming evidence that LDL is causally related to the atherosclerotic process.

The issues that Ravnskov et al. raise were raised earlier in sixty-two Letters to the Editor, which Dr Ravnskov has published about lipids and heart disease in the past 20 years(Reference Ravnskov2–Reference Ravnskov63). His letters have appeared in JAMA, the New England Journal of Medicine, the British Medical Journal, the Lancet, Science, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Annals of Internal Medicine, the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, the International Journal of Cardiology, Circulation, the Quarterly Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Nutrition Metabolism and Cardiovascular diseases, several Scandinavian medical journals, and now in the British Journal of Nutrition.

All these letters argue essentially the same point, namely that lowering blood cholesterol levels is of unproven value. We refer readers to the responses of dozens of reputable scientists set out in each journal's Letters section, where they have carefully responded to Dr Ravnskov's letters and shown that, by and large, Ravnskov's arguments are faulty.

References

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