They are still important to our understanding, though we now know that many other biological systems are also involved.

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All the different factors involved in causing atherosclerosis and CAD interact. This makes research difficult. Also, the potential future risk of heart disease is more difficult to predict because of the combined risk factors.

The good news is that preventative lifestyle interventions can result in an equivalently large reduction in the risk of future illness.

Measuring risk
Armed with this information, techniques were developed to measure separately the two forms of cholesterol - the "good" (HDL) and "bad" (LDL) cholesterol. Further research also began to illuminate the biological and other factors which determine the levels of these two plasma LPs.

Levels of LDL cholesterol are directly linked to those of another protein – apoB, which is almost entirely carried by LDL. So, instead of measuring LDL cholesterol, scientists realised that measuring apoB, carried by LDL, would give similar (but not identical) information.

Over and above this, the LDL packages themselves became smaller and denser in certain kinds of hypertriglyceridaemia (the medical term for raised triglyceride levels).

There is evidence that these forms of LDL are more likely to cause atherosclerosis than the normal version. They are called small-dense LDL or sd-LDL.

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