Rhonda Patrick· PhD
it turned out this drug lowered cholesterol by inhibiting an enzyme that was the final enzyme in this step that we use to make cholesterol so we make cholesterol using two Pathways but one of the pathways results in a molecule called desol which gets converted into cholesterol so there's an enzyme that facilitates that and this drug blocked that enzyme and as the result cholesterol levels went down and although no one was really paying attention at the time desol levels went Skyhigh and it lowered cholesterol so on the basis of that this drug was approved and back at the time that was the only thing you were monitoring was total cholesterol but it was found that the patients on this drug even though they had lower cholesterol had a higher incidence of heart attacks so the drug was ultimately pulled in the 1960s we now know today that it was almost assuredly the case that the desol was even more atherogenic than the cholesterol or at least as atherogenic