Lowered Cholesterol Levels and Violent Acts of Suicide:

Is there an association?

By: Laura A. UrbinALHE 4060

July 20, 2006

Categorizing Suicide• Suicide is usually thought of generally as a

person taking his or her own life. In reality, acts of suicide can be placed into one of two categories:

• 1. Violent– Suffocating, shooting, drowning, cutting, etc.

• 2. Nonviolent or low-violence– Self poisoning by ingestion of drugs, alcohol, petroleum

derivatives, etc.

• In studying patients who have committed suicide research shows that lower levels of cholesterol can be associated with the violent acts of suicide.

• This research is done by drawing blood from a patient who has been admitted into the hospital for committing an act of suicide. The blood is drawn within twenty-four hours of admission to check cholesterol levels in the blood.

• Before this blood can be used in research to determine levels in comparison between violent acts and non-violent acts the researcher must look at patient criteria that may be confounding to the study. Some of these confounding variables are:– Cholesterol lowering medications– Earlier diagnosis of depression– Alcoholism or drug addiction– Unusual dietary habitsAfter checking for confounding variables a researcher is then able to exclude

the data that may confound the results of the study.

• In comparing results between patients who have committed violent acts, non-violent acts, or no suicidal acts (control group) we find that patients who have committed violent acts have considerably lower levels of cholesterol than the other two groups.

• In further research studying the association between suicide and cholesterol we have found that the missing link between the two is the serotonin levels in the brain.

• Serotonin is a naturally occurring chemical in the brain that suppresses harmful impulses such as suicidal or aggressive behavior.

• As a patient lowers their cholesterol levels they cause the levels of serotonin in their brain to also decrease which ultimately cause behaviors that had been suppressed before to no longer be suppressed, giving the reason for those more impulsive, violent acts of suicide to be related to lower cholesterol levels than non-violent acts of suicide.

• The purpose of my research was to prove that there is an association between low levels of cholesterol and violent acts of suicide

• I have found depletion of serotonin levels to be another factor that is caused by lowering cholesterol and ultimately leads to the act of suicide itself.

• I did not do this research project to try to keep people from lowering their cholesterol but instead to keep people aware of possible side effects and behaviors that can be associated with cholesterol lowering that a person would not normally be made aware of.