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Serum Cholesterol Level
Certainty Style Key
Hover over keys for definitions:
True
Likely
Speculative
Human Uniqueness Compared to "Great Apes":
Likely DifferenceMOCA Domain:
PathologyTotal blood cholesterol values tend to be higher in captive chimpanzees than in normal humans, especially at earlier adult ages, but this result is not consistent across current colonies (1,2,3,5,6). It is unknown whether this is due to dietary differences in captivity, or other husbandry factors. Further data on high and low-density lipoproteins in chimpanzees may illuminate this variability (6). In current captive chimpanzees, the cardiac complications of the cholesterol-induced disease atherosclerosis (such as coronary thrombosis) are rare, whereas heart failure with interstitial myocardial fibrosis, but not ischemic necrosis is prevalent (5). While ischemic coronary disease was reported as common in colonies before 1980 (2), only few reports documented postmortem histopathology with myocardial necrosis (4). In view of these recent findings, it is possible that earlier studies misdiagnosed interstitial myocardial fibrosis as ischemic coronary disease. On the other hand, ischemic vascular strokes causing severe brain damage continue to occur in captive chimpanzees (7).
References:
1. Caleb Finch (2010). Evolution in health and medicine, Sackler colloquium: Evolution of the human lifespan and diseases of aging: roles of infection, inflammation, and nutrition. Proceedings of the National Academies of Science (USA) January 2010, 26;107 Suppl 1,1718-1724.2. Caleb Finch and Craig Stanford (2004) Meat-adaptive genes and the evolution of slower aging in humans. Quarterly Review of Biology March 2004,79:3-50.
3. Susan Howell, Kathleen Hoffman, Lyle Bartel, Melanie Schwandt, Joanne Morris, Jo Fritz (2003) Normal hematologic and serum clinical chemistry values for captive chimpanzees (Pan Troglodytes) Comparative Medicine August 2003, 414-423.
4. George Manning (1943) Coronary disease in the ape. American Heart Journal April 1943, 23: 719-724
5. Nissi Varki, Dan Anderson, James Herndon, Tho Pham, Christopher Gregg, Monica Cheriyan, James Murphy, Elizabeth Strober, Jo Fritz, James Else, Ajit Varki (2009) Heart disease is common in humans and chimpanzees, but is caused by different pathological processes. February 2009. Evolutionary Applications, 2: 101-111.
6. Elaine Videan, Christopher Heward, Kajal Chowdhury, John Plummer, Yali Su, Richard Cutler (2009) Comparison of biomarkers of oxidative stress and cardiovascular disease in humans and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). June 2009 Comparative Medicine 59:287-296.
7. Rebecca F Rosen, Aaron S Farberg, Marla Gearing, Jeromy Dooyema, Patrick M Long, Daniel C Anderson,Jeremy Davis-Turak, Giovanni Coppola, Daniel H Geschwind, Jeff Paré, Timothy Q Duong, William D Hopkins, Todd M Preuss, Lary C Walker. 2008. Tauopathy with paired helical filaments in an aged chimpanzee. July 2009 Journal of Comparative Neurology 509:259-270.