Nikolai Anichkov and one hundred years of the hypothesis about cholesterol and atherogenesis Nikolai Anichkov y los cien años de la hipótesis sobre el cholesterol y la aterogénesis

Abstract

© 2016, Sociedad Chilena de Nutricion Bromatologia y Toxilogica. All rights reserved. The relationship of cholesterol to atherogenesis already fulfilled one hundred years. The merit of this important discovery is attributed to a Russian military doctor, Nikolai Anichkov, who using rabbits as experimental model, was able to show the accumulation of “lipoids” when he fed animals with a diet rich in cholesterol. His experimental observations were criticized by many researchers, since he used an animal that is not carnivorous, so it was an inappropriate model. Anichkov published very few scientific articles, and all of them in Russian language. Only in 1933 he could make public his work to the Western world by publishing a review on his scientific work in English. Was only in 1984 when the scientific community recognized the merit of his research, which was pioneer in the understanding that we have today about the relationship of artherogenesis and cholesterol.