Prescribe statins to kids as young as 15, experts suggest
Children as young as 15 should take statins to reduce their risk of serious heart disease in the future, top heart experts have suggested.
The striking recommendations are a response to the findings of a new study that found warnings signs of future heart attack and stroke can be spotted in teenagers.
University of Cambridge experts found high or fluctuating cholesterol in childhood heightened the risk of a condition linked to heart disease called atherosclerosis.
Atherosclerosis is a narrowing of the arteries due to a build-up of fatty deposits over time, which cause blockages in blood supply, triggering potentially fatal heart attacks and strokes.
Professor Ziad Mallat, cardiologist and author of the study, said the discovery suggested that drugs like statins to control cholesterol in teens if ‘lifestyle measures have failed’.
First experimenting on mice, the Cambridge team fed two groups of rodents a fat-rich diet, which is known to increase ‘bad’ cholesterol, either intermittently or continuously.
Professor Mallat, a British Heart Foundation (BHF) expert in cardiovascular medicine Cambridge, said: ‘When I asked my group and a number of people who are experts in atherosclerosis, no one could tell me what the result would be.
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‘Some people thought it would make no difference, others thought it would change the risk.
‘In fact, what we found was that an intermittent high fat diet starting while the mice were still young – one week on, a few weeks off, another week on, and so on – was the worst option in terms of atherosclerosis risk.’
Fluctuation may be dangerous due to how it impacts protective immune cells known as resident arterial macrophages, which alter in the early stages of atherosclerosis.
The study suggests intermittent high cholesterol may prevent these cells from becoming protective and can instead accelerate the disease.
Researchers, who published their findings in Nature, then analysed data from the Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns Study, a long-term study tracking heart risks from childhood to adulthood.
More than 2,000 people recruited during the 1980s, between the ages of 3 and 12, had ultrasounds of their carotid arteries when they were aged around 30 and then again at around 50.
