Coronary heart disease continues to be the leading cause of death in the United States. Current attempts to treat atherosclerosis and coronary artery disease often involve pharmaceutical and surgical treatments. While these treatments are successful in managing the pain from coronary heart disease, they do little to prevent or stop it. There are a number of clinical strategies that are currently being researched to treat atherosclerosis through HDL-increasing therapies. These clinical studies have shown positive effects through nutritional intervention, exercise, stress reduction, and tobacco and alcohol cessation. These treatment options are explored in greater detail, including their potential to halt and even reverse atherosclerosis. The results from these recent studies and how they relate to the mechanism of reverse cholesterol transport are also critically examined. Reverse cholesterol transport is a multistep process resulting in the net movement of cholesterol from peripheral tissues back to the liver via the plasma. The mechanism of reverse cholesterol transport is also further explored in this review.

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Introduction: Central pontine myelinolysis (CPM) is a well-recognized syndrome that is related to various conditions such as rapid correction of hyponatremia and chronic alcoholism. Case Report: We report a case of a recently discharged patient with dysarthria, vertigo, and progressive gait changes, with radiological evidence of CPM, but without the expected rapid correction of hyponatremia seen in other patients that developed CPM. Conclusion: CPM is rare without severe hyponatremia of 120 meq/L or less, but there are other factors that contribute to the development of CPM, that may be unrelated to hyponatremia. Severe alcohol abuse, acute pancreatitis, and subsequent poor nutritional intake were likely the major factors in inducing osmotic injury in this case, which lead to CPM.