"Good" cholesterol is more complex than it seems
 

This article may be of interest to the NT community; http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/...&et_cid=332196

An explanatory comment; "good cholesterol" (HDL) is generally protective against cardiovascular disease because it delivers excess cholesterol to the liver (a process called reverse cholesterol transport) - the liver then disposes of it.

SR-BI (referred to in the link) is a scavenger receptor, expressed on liver cells - its job is to allow HDL to dock to those cells, allowing them to take up cholesterol and dispose of it. If SR-BI is absent or defective, this process does not work well.

Pfizer had a plan to put their HDL drug which was in trials added to Lipitor. But some people in that study died, so they scrapped it.

More here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1702474/