Hi, it's Ira Flato, and this is Science Friday.

If you've scheduled your yearly physical, one of the blood tests your doctor will probably order is a cholesterol test, that lipids panel, right?

The test is a kind of a way to peek inside your arteries.

It measures HDL, the presumed good stuff, and LDL,

the bad stuff, to see if you might be at risk for a heart attack or a stroke. And if your

doctor doesn't like your numbers, you may be asked to join the millions of Americans who are

taking statins. Or maybe you are already on a statin, and in spite of eating your body weight

and oatmeal, your numbers are still high. So what now? Should you try one of the new treatments for

high cholesterol that is on the market now? And what if your doctor could give you one injection,

a CRISPR treatment that actually changed your genes and lowered

your numbers, maybe for life. Would you do that? That's what we're going to be talking about

this hour. So let me introduce. They have Podjidipati, who was a preventive cardiologist and

director of the cardiio Metabolic Prevention Clinic

at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and Kieran Musanuru, a cardiologist and professor

of translational research at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Thank you both for

joining me. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you so much.

Thanks for openness. Neha, how do you decide who needs treatment or who needs to start a statin?

Yeah, it's a great question and something we're asked in clinic every day. And lucky for us,

there are actually really clear guidelines from all of the major professional societies,

cardiology, diabetes, and others that help

to guide us and help us figure out exactly who needs statins and who doesn't. So it's not a mystery.

It's based on really good evidence. And I think that's something that's really important for

...