The US National Cholesterol Education Program

Abstract

Considerable changes are currently taking place in the attitudes of U. S. physicians, other health professionals and the public to cholesterol and coronary heart disease (CHD). An increasing awareness of the role of dietary fat and blood cholesterol in CHD can be traced to gradual advances in our understanding over the past two decades. However, it has been markedly stimulated by 3 recent events, namely the report of the Lipid Research Clinics Coronary Primary Prevention Trial (LRC-CPPT), the recommendations of the U.S. National Institutes of Health Consensus Development Conference on Lowering Blood Cholesterol and the recent initiation of the National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP). I will deal briefly with each of these.