How Does Bile Acid Sequestrants Work

Bile acid sequestrants are medicines that help lower your LDL (bad) cholesterol. Too much cholesterol in your blood can stick to the walls of your arteries and narrow or block them. These medicines work by blocking bile acid in your stomach from being absorbed in your blood.

What is the mechanism of action of bile acid sequestrants?

Bile acid sequestrants bind bile acids in the intestine and increase the excretion of bile acids in the stool. This reduces the amount of bile acids returning to the liver and forces the liver to produce more bile acids to replace the bile acids lost in the stool.

How effective are bile acid sequestrants?

These actions help lower cholesterol levels in the blood. As a result, bile acid sequestrants mainly lower LDL cholesterol between 15% to 30% and only slightly raise HDL cholesterol by about 3% to 5%.