Increasingly, the ratio of two transporters of cholesterol around the body, HDL and LDL, is used as a marker of risk, although we cannot yet measure LDL directly. A much better marker of the amount of high-risk lipids in your system is another small cholesterol transporter protein called ApoB, which deposits cholesterol in the wrong places and opens channels in the vessels allowing the lipid to form the plaque that causes the damage. It is not, as previously believed, the total amount of circulating cholesterol that is important but where the cholesterol localises, and this varies widely. Most
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