Adding Zetia to Zocor, he said, might lower cholesterol levels without reducing heart attacks and strokes.

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Patients in the exercise group reported lower cholesterol levels and less back pain than those in the control group.

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Scientists found that compared with both their normal diet and a low fat diet those who ate the walnuts had much lower cholesterol levels.

BBC: Walnuts

Atherosclerosis, the disease that leads to heart attacks and strokes, causes arteries to thicken, so the patients on Vytorin should have had skinnier artery walls than those on Zocor alone because of their lower cholesterol levels.

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Researchers hoped this could help answer the question of whether lowering cholesterol to ever lower levels is helpful.

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Research shows that people who walk daily have a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes and lower LDL (bad) cholesterol levels.

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In an effort to tease out the effect of Zetia, researchers looked at a subgroup of patients who were supposed to lower their cholesterol to very low levels.

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Last night, the Food and Drug Administration announced the approval of Kynamro, a new drug to lower cholesterol in patients with homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia (HoFH), a rare genetic disease that causes sky-high cholesterol levels and heart attacks at a young age.

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But that also means millions of Americans previously regarded as having safe levels of artery-clogging cholesterol (those with a rating lower than 130) might benefit handsomely, too, from the pricey drugs.

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