There aren't million other factors. Saying that cholesterol is affected only by saturated fat is not true. just like saying it doesn't affect it at all.
there is no coherent nutrition advice available at the moment, other than observational evidence of various diseases forming when a population is fed an improper diet.
for example, if starchivores like apes are given huge amounts of sugary foods, they will develop atherosclerosis, the same happens if they're given huge amounts of fatty foods. if carnivores were fed huge amounts of fatty foods, they don't get atherosclerosis, only if you do not remove their thyroid gland, if they on the other hand are fed sugary foods, they develop atherosclerosis. so the mechanism involved in absorbing fat and using it (through various types of cholesterol - lipoproteins), seems to be different between the herbivores, omnivores, carnivores. interesting thing about this is that the discrete classification is faulty and that different hormonal balance can give rise to no or different disease.
there's plenty of examples like this one. but it has nothing to do with the individual as population statistic is quite different from needs of an individual.
