Dietary Fats and Blood Coagulation

THE search for the etiology of coronary-artery disease continues to be directed toward factors that reside in either the host or the environment. Given the host, with all his genetic inadequacies, the environmental factors, diet being an example, have been suspect. There is indirect evidence — epidemiologic, experimental, clinical and biochemical — that both the quality and the quantity of dietary fats influence the development of atherosclerosis. Sustained or intermittent lipidemia, in its possible relation to atherosclerosis in various segments of the arterial tree, becomes of importance if it influences the sudden thrombotic occlusion of a blood vessel. Most research . . .