Sunday, August 6, 2017

Interleukin-6, the gambit of the crusaders of cholesterol as a plumbing gunk.

As if in possession of a powerful secret bit of information, the petty crusaders of the idea that LDL particles gum up their pathway in the human body, rather than being present at sites of chronic inflammation, will point to IL-6 and snicker as if I didn't know.

IL-6 causes LDL receptor upregulation, and fit and trim appearances.....But also a myriad of degenerative diseases when it is emitted by the immune cells or arterial cells.

One acknowledgement:  Atherosclerosis occurs elsewhere besides the coronary arterial bed, the carotids, the cerebrovasculature, the renal bifurcation, and the iliac bifurcations.  Because of the mechanical nature of the heart, these plaques are most often lethal there.  DeBakey published in detail about this.  In fact, it is NOT the heart that most commonly suffers atherosclerosis, but the split that feeds our left and right legs.  Yet, this is in line with what the "backwards conspiracy theorists" claim - that atherosclerosis occurs at bifurcations and curves with hemodynamic alteration.  There is nothing contrary.  Yet, the iliac plaques are generally not lethal.  The second most common areas is....the heart arteries.

Patterns of atherosclerosis and their surgical significance.

Yes, IL-6 like nearly all things in the body has a positive function.  You need IL-6 signaling.

Inhibiting Interleukin-6 (IL-6): The Key To Health, Successful Aging and Vitality

Some would have a myopic focus on hyper IL-6 reducing plasma lipids and quietly chuckle internally while saying to themselves, "Cholesterol causes heart disease, not IL-6."  Not so.  Maybe for a while, but the factual mechanism is that chronic IL-6 is destructive and involved in several chronic degenerative diseases, including atherosclerosis.  Nothing backwards about anything that anyone has seen.  It is a matter of time scale.  Short term versus long term.  For example, from the link above, "In people who exercised for 3-3.5 hours (marathon exercise), IL-6 increased from 1.5 pg/ml to 94.4 pg/ml immediately post-exercise and to 22.1 pg/ml 2 hours post-exercise (half-life of 1-2 hours) (R, R2). This means blood levels should be completely normal the next day – even after running a marathon."  If you had some simmering internal damage emitting the amount of IL-6 generated after a marathon everyday for many years, say a lot of widespread endothelial denudations (torn off lining of the artery), that situation is very different.

In the context of chronic diabetes mellitus, IL-6 drives higher LDL levels in the blood, not lower levels as would be seen in certain acute inflammatory episodes.

Interleukin-6 mediates hepatic hypersecretion of apolipoprotein B

You can have low LDL but high Lp(a).  IL-6 is a straightforward upregulator of Lp(a) if not LDL.  Lowering IL-6 lowers Lp(a), much more atherogenic than LDL will ever be.

IL-6 blockade by monoclonal antibodies inhibits apolipoprotein (a) expression and lipoprotein (a) synthesis in humans

It doesn't report "IL-6 blockade RAISES blood Lp(a) in humans."  Now that would be backwards.













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