Dietary copper: a powerful determinant of cholesterolemia.

A new hypothesis suggests that deficiency of copper is important in the etiology and pathophysiology of ischemic heart disease. Several chemicals, called cholesterotropic and cuprotropic, that affect cholesterolemia also affect copper metabolism. Responses to some of these chemicals that have been tested in humans were compared on a molar basis. Dietary copper was approximately one hundred times as active in lowering cholesterol in plasma than was clofibrate which, in turn was six times as active as dietary fat. Dietary copper may be a powerful determinent of cholesterolemia.