What is the epidemiological evidence linking dyslipidemia to VTE?
Two cohort [6,7] and six case–control studies [8,9,10,11,12,13] have examined the relation between dyslipidemia or serum lipoprotein (a) [Lp(a)] and VTE. Goldhaber et al retrospectively evaluated several risk factors among 46 adults diagnosed with pulmonary embolism at autopsy and 3424 individuals enrolled at baseline in the Framingham Study [6]. Total serum cholesterol was observed to be a significant risk factor for pulmonary embolism in women (P = 0.049), but not men (P > 0.05). In the Nurses’ Health Study, 280 middle-aged women with a self-reported history of pulmonary embolism were compared with a cohort of 112,542 women without a history of pulmonary embolism [7] (Table 1). They found that those with a self-reported diagnosis of hypercholesterolemia were at no increased risk for pulmonary embolism (multivariate relative risk 1.1, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.7–1.5).
