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Obesity crisis: doctors back statins for 8-year-olds

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Children as young as eight with high cholesterol levels should be put on statins to reduce their risk of heart disease, doctors in the United States have recommended.

The move by the American Academy of Paediatrics has triggered a furore, because there is little long-term data on the risks and benefits of statins in children and, as yet, no evidence that the drugs can prevent heart attacks when they are adults.

But the numbers of obese and overweight children are soaring on both sides of the Atlantic and experts in the UK, who are already treating small numbers of very high risk children with statins, said it was time wider use of the drugs was discussed.

Most doctors agree that the use of statins for some children whose genetic inheritance puts them seriously at risk of death from a heart attack in their 20s or 30s is justified. But the American academy has further pushed back the boundary. It wants cholesterol screening for all children with a family history of high cholesterol or heart disease, for children whose family history is unknown and for those with obesity, high blood pressure or diabetes between the ages of two and 10. If any of those over the age of eight have particularly high cholesterol levels, it says, statins should be considered.

The academy also says that babies in whom obesity or overweight is considered a problem by the age of 12 months should be given reduced-fat milk.

"We are in an epidemic," said Jatinder Bhatia, a member of the academy's nutrition committee, which made the recommendation, and professor and chief of neonatology at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta. "The risk of giving statins at a lower age is less than the benefit you're going to get out of it."

But a number of doctors in the US expressed strong reservations yesterday about the use of drugs in children whose most urgent need is to get more exercise and eat a more healthy diet. Cathy Ross, a cardiac nurse with the British Heart Foundation, said that it was important to be sure there was a genetic component to the high cholesterol reading. "We should always eliminate other possible reasons, like a child's diet and lack of activity and weight in proportion to their height," she said. Counselling parents on diet and exercise should be tried first. "You don't give an adult statins without implementing lifestyle interventions."
JanaPokana

4 responses // Obesity crisis: doctors back statins for 8-year-olds

  • biggest thing to stop obesity sell the x-box disconnect the cable sell the tv limit what they eat and tell them to go outside and do something just a thought
    TexasPatriot67
  • Statins are killers - they provoke heart failure, they weaken the heart muscles. To treat children with statins guarantees that they won't live beyond thirty years, if they reach thirty years. Give them garlic (1 raw clove a day), Omega-3 and CoQ10 instead.
    Vierotchka
  • this is ridiculous. why is the gov't pumping so many drugs down our throats? It makes me veeeeery suspicious.
    DeliaTheArtist
  • Why are the members of our society with the highest energy levels fat?If i had a child you could bet your shit that i wouldn't let it stay inside and grow exponentially larger until these drugs were an option.
    mookster_07

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