Cholesterol seen tied to heart disease, not stroke

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers aiming to establish whether high cholesterol raises the risk of stroke said on Thursday they were baffled by findings indicating lower cholesterol levels were not linked to reduced stroke deaths. 

They said their analysis of 61 previous studies involving almost 900,000 adults, conducted mostly in western Europe and North America, clearly showed that people with lower total blood cholesterol levels had a lower heart disease death rate.