Just from my own anecdotal evidence, going clean vegan dropped my cholesterol levels from 6.1 to 5.1 in ~3 months. I’m pretty convinced there is a lot of truth to high saturated fat/animal products negatively impacting cholesterol levels. But that is my own personal experience.

I’d encourage anyone seeking insights to just try a vegan diet for a while and compare their bloodwork, and how they feel. Seems like little point looking for answers in the science because of the amount of noise.