Best Small Cos. But we don't think it's going to be three times the market. The new guidelines come from the National Cholesterol Education Program, which is appointed by the National Institutes of Health, and they are published in this week's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Cholesterol is one of the body's ways of transporting fat.
One form of it, called low-density lipoprotein, or LDL, binds to arteries and hardens. This often leads to heart disease. The new regulations could put as many as 36 million people on a class of cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins, which are aimed mostly at LDL cholesterol. Many of the people who needed the medications under the previously existing guidelines did not take them, Hazlett points out. Others have estimated that only half of the patients who should have been on the drug actually were.