Experts Say Children Need to be Examined for High Cholesterol

Children, whether or not they have a family history of heart-disease or high cholesterol, need to be screened for cholesterol, according to a recent report. West Virginia University researchers in Morgantown, United States, think that numerous kids who have higher levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol may be missing a cholesterol screening. Low-density lipoprotein, or ‘bad cholesterol’ is commonly known as the cause of cardiovascular diseases.

In West Virginia, a program screened all 5th graders for cholesterol over the last ten years. The study involved the screening of 20,266 children and almost seventy-one percent qualified for screening. Amongst 5,798 kids who didn’t meet the screening requirements, almost ten percent had high low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels and 1.7 percent of the children were discovered to have LDL’s higher than 160 mg/dL– which is high enough for a treatment with statin, a cholesterol-lowering drug.

Recent guidelines established in the 1990′s reported that at least twenty-five percent of kids that had high cholesterol would be absent in the screenings. Physicians guessed that these kids would possess only mildly levels of high cholesterol that would be diagnosed while they grew up and be contained with the right exercise and diet.

A recent study, however, disagreed with this by reporting that kids that had high cholesterol might grow up having other issues such as an increased diabetes risk and heart disease. Neal reported to the Time that he was worried because if the kids do not alter their ways, they will get Type 2 diabetes.