LDL cholesterol has a linear dose-dependent effect on heart disease risk.

“And we know that it's actually not so much LDL, but it's more apolipoprotein B. But that tends to track with LDL just in general. And if you look at the mechanism-- I mean, we know that LDL can penetrate the endothelium, so there's the mechanism is present. If we look at the epidemiology, it supports that it's an independent risk factor, and then, again, these Mendelian randomization studies where we can look at people's exposure over a lifetime, and then we see that linear dose-dependent effect.”