Dietary fat and serum lipids: an evaluation of the experimental data.

Regression analysis of the combined published data on the effects of dietary fatty acids and cholesterol on serum cholesterol and lipoprotein cholesterol evaluated with groups of human subjects shows that 1) saturated fatty acids increase and are the primary determinants of serum cholesterol, 2) polyunsaturated fatty acids actively lower serum cholesterol, 3) monounsaturated fatty acids have no independent effect on serum cholesterol and, 4) dietary cholesterol increases serum cholesterol and must be considered when the effects of fatty acids are evaluated. More limited data on low-density-lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) show that changes in LDL-C roughly parallel the changes in serum cholesterol but that changes in high-density-lipoprotein cholesterol cannot be satisfactorily predicted from available data.