OMG! Who will benefit from this? I believe this is the parents fault. Poor children.
Quote:
Tens of thousands of kids may benefit from cholesterol-lowering medication, but no one would know because screening guidelines exclude too many children, U.S. doctors said Monday.
In a report published in the journal Pediatrics, they call for screening of all children, expanding one set of current recommendations that target only those whose parents or grandparents have heart disease or high cholesterol. Another existing set of guidelines doesn't call for screening in any children.
Screening all children would "identify a number of children who are of very significant risk of premature heart disease," said Dr. William Neal of West Virginia University in Morgantown, who led the new study.
Neal said treating youth with cholesterol-lowering drugs, the so-called statins, would curb the risk that they went on to develop heart problems in middle age. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the Western world.
Based on data from West Virginia, Neal and colleagues found that more than one percent of all fifth-graders had cholesterol levels that warranted drug treatment. But a third of those children didn't have relatives with heart disease or high cholesterol, and so wouldn't have been screened under the current guidelines, issued by the government's National Cholesterol Education Program.
"I have gradually become convinced that universal screening in children is not only preferable, but necessary," said Neal. He added that although universal screening would be expensive, it would save a lot of money later on if heart disease could be prevented.
But not all scientists agree that screening is a good idea. For example, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a federal expert panel, currently doesn't recommend routine cholesterol screening in any children.
"Unfortunately, there is no evidence that starting a ten-year-old on cholesterol-lowering drugs will prevent heart disease 40 years later," said Dr. Michael L. LeFevre, a member of the task force.
He said statin treatment in children was still controversial, and that no long-term safety data existed.
The new study tapped into data from more than 20,000 children who had been screened at public schools in West Virginia over five years.
More than seven in 10 school kids had first-degree relatives with heart disease, and about one percent of those had "bad" cholesterol (LDL cholesterol) levels that might require drug treatment in addition to diet changes and exercise, according to the researchers.
Yet among the kids without heart disease, the percentage of children who might benefit from treatment was closer to two percent than to one, meaning that family history didn't seem to make a difference.
"It is therefore prudent to implement universal screening in the pediatric population independent of family history," the researchers conclude.
Big Pharma will benefit the most of course!
Hopefully many parents will revolt and say NO to this outrageous idea!
Absolutely!
I guess they figured that they couldn't lower cholesterol numbers any more without people becoming obviously sicker so they decided to try and lowering the testing age instead.
This is a really disgusting development. Big Pharma is now going after our children too to swell their pockets even more. How many children die from heart disease today? I think Big Pharma wants to make even more ridiculous profits and will go to any extreme to scare parents into putting their children onto their toxic drugs which will cause many deaths in children that could have been totally avoided. I hope this does not come to pass as it is really a crime and should be treated as such.
Big Pharma is constantly looking to expand their market. That is the reason they are targeting children, first with drugs to control ADD and ADHD, then antidepressants, and now cholesterol lowering drugs.
Children who are put on cholesterol lowering drugs will start dropping dead from stroke and heart attacks, and it will again be the parents fault for being ignorant to the facts, and for trusting government officials and their doctors.
The mainstream reply will be "without the drugs they would have died even sooner".
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Let Food Be Your Medicine And Medicine Be Your Food.(Hippocrates)
I totally agree with you that this will be what happens. We will have to recheck this in another few years and see if our expectation is correct. I sure wish there was a way to prevent children losing their lives for Big Pharma's financial benefit.
What the parents really need to do is revolt against the food industry. If they didn't feed their kids such crapoly there would be no reason for them to want to test in the first place.
__________________ "The nurse should be cheerful, orderly, punctual, patient, full of faith, - receptive to Truth and Love" Mary Baker Eddy
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What the parents really need to do is revolt against the food industry. If they didn't feed their kids such crapoly there would be no reason for them to want to test in the first place.
Parents need to become aware of nutrition, and have to at least share the responsibility for their children eating junk food.
It is reality that causes both parents to work, therefore supper usually consists of fast food or processed food. It is sad to see twelve year old children suffering from heart disease and diabetes, but until parents understand you are what you eat, children will no longer outlive the parents.
__________________
Let Food Be Your Medicine And Medicine Be Your Food.(Hippocrates)
High cholesterol in children may drop naturally on its own over time
by Jonathan Benson, citizen journalist
(NaturalNews) A new study published in the journal Pediatrics has found that children with high cholesterol may not need drug treatments to bring them back to normal, healthy levels. Children who tested with high cholesterol levels initially in the study eventually had their levels taper off, indicating that the process may occur naturally over time, without the need for drugs.
Researchers explained that cholesterol levels can vary from day to day anyway, and that testing is most accurate when done numerous times. There are "bad" cholesterol days and "good" cholesterol days, and researchers believe that tests showing extremely high levels may be indicative of a bad cholesterol day, and not necessarily high cholesterol levels in general.
"Both in kids and in adults there is quite a bit of variability over time," explained David Freedman from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). "People with very, very high cholesterol are likely to be those that are having a bad cholesterol day. My paper emphasizes that you probably need at least two or three measurements to screen out kids who are just having a bad day,"
In other words, prescribing children cholesterol medication without doing multiple tests a few months apart may be a mistake, because children who test high on one day might test far lower on another. And children who do have high general levels may experience a drop over time naturally, without the need for drug administration.
The study, which involved more than 6,800 children from Bogalusa, Louisiana, found that after four years, cholesterol levels in children who initially tested high dropped below threshold levels 60 percent of the time.
But even for children whose levels did not drop, experts are unsure whether drug treatment is at all appropriate or helpful for children. Simple exercise and a healthy diet may be enough to maintain healthy cholesterol levels.
Children and cholesterol
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