What is The Role of LDL in Aortic Valve Stenosis?

Since LDL cholesterol could cause an increase in aortic valve stenosis and levels of aortic valve calcium, LDL-lowering therapy could have health benefits when administered in the early stages of disease, according to a recent study.

For the study, researchers evaluated the genetic predisposition to elevations of plasma lipids and whether it was associated with the development of aortic valve disease in 6942 participants from various community-based cohorts in the CHARGE consortium. The primary outcomes of the study were aortic valve calcium measured with CT and the presence of aortic stenosis.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

RELATED CONTENT
Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement for Aortic Stenosis
Successful Valve-in-Valve Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Researchers found aortic valve calcium in 2245 participants (32%).

Plasma LDL-C, but not HDL-C, was found to be significantly associated with both the presence of calcium and with incident aortic stenosis (aortic stenosis incidence: 1.3% and 2.4% in lowest and highest LDL-C quartiles, respectively)

“Our findings link a genetically mediated increase in plasma LDL-C with early subclinical valve disease, as measured by aortic valve calcium, and incident clinical aortic stenosis, providing supportive evidence for a causal role of LDL-C in the development of aortic stenosis,” they concluded.

“These data suggest that, in addition to the established risks for myocardial infarction and other vascular diseases, increases in LDL-C are also associated with increased risk for aortic stenosis.”

The complete study is published in the October issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

-Michelle Canales

References:

Smith JG, Luk K, Schulz CA, et al. Association of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol-related genetic variants with aortic valve calcium and incident aortic stenosis. JAMA. 2014 October [epub ahead of print] doi: 10.1001/jama.2014.13959.

JAMA Network. Genetic predisposition to elevated LDL-C associated with narrowing of the aortic valve. October 26, 2014.  http://media.jamanetwork.com/news-item/genetic-predisposition-to-elevated-ldl-c-associated-with-narrowing-of-the-aortic-valve/.  Accessed October 27, 2014.