Most cardiologists fighting heart disease aim to take down the so-called bad cholesterol.
Boden wants to change that. He served as a co-chairman of a group of 12 academic doctors who last December presented research papers on HDL in a special supplement of the Journal of American Cardiology. After nearly a generation of education, almost all adults know that high amounts of cholesterol are bad for the heart. Most of the cholesterol in the blood is carried by LDL, and lowering LDL and total cholesterol has been the focus of public-health campaigns. Health warnings about improving diet and exercise routines, and the introduction of cholesterol-lowering statin drugs in the past decade, have been successful in helping reduce both cholesterol counts and death rates from heart disease.