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The cholesterol levels of preschoolers are worth measuring!

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Cholesterol is the building material of the brain. Therefore, it is important that the developing brain be adequately supplied with it. Too low levels of cholesterol in the brain during childhood can result in overly impulsive behaviour later in life, suggests a doctoral thesis from the University of Tartu.

“The earlier in life we ​​see that the cholesterol level in a person’s blood is low, the more likely it is to cause potential behavioural problems in the future,” says Katrin Tomson-Johanson, a recent doctor of medical sciences at the University of Tartu. For example, a person with a low blood cholesterol level in childhood may be impulsive in adulthood. As a result, a person may take unnecessary risks or have suicidal thoughts.

How exactly a person’s cholesterol level, impulsivity and genetic markers mutually influence each other throughout life is what Tomson-Johanson studied in more detail in her doctoral thesis. To conduct this research, she relied on data from a personality, behaviour and health survey of Estonian children. “In our study, it turned out that low cholesterol level is a risk factor only for men,” the fresh doctor brings up.

Impulsivity can also be good

Impulsivity here means that a person behaves without processing all the available information and without thinking about consequences to themselves and others. According to Katrin Tomson-Johanson, most formal definitions highlight the negative side of the matter. “One of the important starting points of my work was that impulsivity can be both positive and negative. The fact that you make decisions without processing all the information is not necessarily bad,” she notes.

Some of the negative characteristics measured as impulsivity are thoughtlessness and disinhibition. While research tends to focus on lack of control, in her work, Tomson-Johanson also measured positive qualities of impulsivity: a desire for experience and a quick decision-making style. “The desire for experience means that you want to have new experiences, you like new things and put yourself in situations that are prone to be risky,” she elaborates. A quick-thinking person, on the other hand, makes decisions without taking too long to think them through.

A good example of desire for experiences is what the fresh doctor called high-risk sports, such as skydiving. A person who does this, she says, cannot be completely unthinking or without control: “You want to be a risk-taker, but you still think things through very thoroughly and make sure that both you and others would be safe. It’s positive impulsiveness.”

Enough cholesterol is important

But what is the relationship between impulsivity and cholesterol? “The brain is largely made up of fat, including cholesterol,” explains the recent doctor. “From this, we can assume that the level of cholesterol is important for the brain.” Cholesterol is synthesised in two places in the human body: brain cholesterol in the brain and blood cholesterol in the liver. In her work, Katrin Tomson-Johanson studied the cholesterol found in the blood.

“In childhood, while the brain is developing, there has to be enough cholesterol,” she states. Both too high and too low cholesterol levels carry risks. Too much cholesterol is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. However, a cholesterol level that’s too low can lead to neurological and psychiatric illnesses.

As the Tomson-Johanson study showed, a 5-HTTLPR gene variant is associated with lower cholesterol levels. However, the association with problematic impulsive behaviour in adulthood was found only in men. “This again points out that cholesterol is a factor that affects men and women differently. Interactions with other factors, such as stress levels or the effects of stressful life events, are also very different,” the doctor points out. Stressful life events affect impulsivity so strongly, she says, that they should always be taken into account when measuring the characteristic.

In addition, her work revealed a link between HTR2A gene polymorphism and impulsivity, which is influenced by cholesterol levels. “This relationship was very different in men and women,” explains Tomson-Johanson. “High cholesterol makes men with this genetic risk genotype less impulsive, but high cholesterol makes women with the same genotype more impulsive.”

Overall, however, we found that it was cholesterol levels measured at a young age that influenced behaviour in the future,” says the doctor. Picture: Gerd Altmann from Pixabay.

Cholesterol levels should be measured before a child goes to school.

In studying the interaction between cholesterol and risk behaviour, Katrin Tomson-Johanson looked at five areas of risk-taking: traffic and sexual behaviour and drug, alcohol and tobacco use. “Each of these facets is related to cholesterol a little differently. Overall, however, we found that it was cholesterol levels measured at a young age that influenced behaviour in the future,” says the doctor.

The gender difference also emerged clearly in the interaction between risk-taking behaviour and impulsivity. In men, risk-taking behaviour was more associated with the good aspects of impulsivity: a desire for new experiences and a quick decision-making style. On the other hand, these men were more likely to use alcohol and tobacco products. “For women, the relationship was negative,” says Tomson-Johanson. “For example, in sexual behaviour, it was found that risky sexual behaviour in men is associated with positive impulsivity, whereas in women it is associated with negative impulsivity.”

According to her, the main message of the study is that the brain needs cholesterol to develop well, so Tomson-Johanson’s recommendations are mostly aimed at doctors.

“Cholesterol level is not an indicator to start monitoring in your forties, but could already be measured when children go to school,” she says. If it turns out that your child’s cholesterol level is abnormally low, this is a risk factor to consider in the future. Tomson-Johansson says that previous literature has also shown that people who are hospitalised or incarcerated are at a higher risk for suicide, among other things, if their cholesterol levels are low.

Katrin Tomson-Johanson defended her doctoral thesis “Impulsivity, serum lipids and serotonin-related functional gene variants” on August 23 at the University of Tartu. The work was supervised by Jaanus Harro from the University of Tartu. The opponent was István Bitter from Semmelweis University.

This article was originally published on the webpage of University of Tartu.


If this peek into child psychology has you curious, don’t just sit in the timeout corner – play along with our next article and read more about how University of Tartu Researchers Explore Child Vulnerability in Landmark Publication!

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