Blood cholesterol and vascular mortality by age, sex, and blood pressure: a meta-analysis of individual data from 61 prospective studies with 55,000 vascular deaths.

Age, sex, and blood pressure could modify the associations of total cholesterol (and its main two fractions, HDL and LDL cholesterol) with vascular mortality. This meta-analysis combined prospective studies of vascular mortality that recorded both blood pressure and total cholesterol at baseline, to determine the joint relevance of these two risk factors.