HUNDREDS of premature deaths from coronary heart disease could be prevented each year in the US if every child had their cholesterol levels checked at age 11.
That鈥檚 according to of West Virginia University in Morgantown, and colleagues, who say that current methods of only testing children if high cholesterol misses a third of those who would benefit from treatment. Evidence suggests that treating children with elevated cholesterol reduces their risk of coronary heart disease later in life.
Neal used data from a introduced for all state school pupils aged 10 or 11 in West Virginia in 2000. Of 20,266 children, 268 had cholesterol levels that merited consideration for cholesterol-lowering statins. One-third of these children would have been missed if current screening guidelines focusing on family history alone were applied (Pediatrics, ).
Advertisement
But critics say this does not justify the cost: 鈥淢ore than 90 per cent of children in this study did not have high cholesterol, making [universal screening] difficult to justify,鈥� says Ellen Mason, a senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation.
