Good, solid science.
Yes, but WHICH Science?
Posted on 07/06/2008 11:32:04 PM PDT by neverdem
The nation’s pediatricians are recommending wider cholesterol screening for children and more aggressive use of cholesterol-lowering drugs starting as early as the age of 8 in hopes of preventing adult heart problems.
The new guidelines were to be issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics on Monday.
The push to aggressively screen and medicate for high cholesterol in children is certain to create controversy amid a continuing debate about the use of prescription drugs in children as well as the best approaches to ward off heart disease in adults.
But proponents say there is growing evidence that the first signs of heart disease show up in childhood, and with 30 percent of the nation’s children overweight or obese, many doctors fear that a rash of early heart attacks and diabetes is on the horizon as these children grow up.
Previously, the academy had said cholesterol drugs should be considered in children older than 10 if they fail to lose weight after a 6- to 12-month effort. The academy estimated that under the current guidelines, 30 percent to 60 percent of children with high cholesterol were being missed. And for some children, cholesterol-lowering drugs, called statins, may be their best hope of lowering their risk of early heart attack, proponents said.
“We are in an epidemic,” said Dr. Jatinder Bhatia, a member of the academy’s nutrition committee who is a 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.”
Dr. Bhatia said that although there was not “a whole lot” of data on pediatric use of cholesterol-lowering drugs, recent research showed that the drugs were generally safe for children.
Surprisingly, the paper published in the medical...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
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Now you've gone too far!
Aren’t these the same liberal quacks who quized kids about whether guns were inside the homes?
Yep - follow the money.
Succinct and exactly correct. The cholesterol market is "saturated"
The article is directed at kids who are seriously overweight.
I work with a young man who is 350 at least and only about 25. I'll guarantee he doesn't have the great numbers you have. His kids are very young and he will likely not see them graduate unless he looses a lot of weight.
This sentence makes it clear that this would be a mandatory medication of our children. There's no voluntary aspect to it, as there would be with SUV sales and the various Immelda Markos's we are married to :0(
Heart patients don't die from high cholesterol. They die from artery blockages (caused by plaque made from inflammatory debris, not cholesterol). Your work-colleague isn't going to be saved by statins but (possibly) by a change of diet and routine.
The article is aimed at high cholesterol kids, not fat kids. These are youngsters who may be perfectly healthy and may also be perfectly lean, but have a particular proxy indicator that means it's ok to force-feed them with liver-destroying statins. It's grotesque!
Sorry, slight amendment
You’re right: the article IS aimed at fat kids, but the drive will be on high cholesterol kids. And the threshold of badness will drop every year :0(
Good, solid science.
Yes, but WHICH Science?
I think I get it, but, I expect the healthcare industry to conduct themselves at a higher level than the used car industry-and those others. I know they don’t, I just want them to do so.
Bingo!
I welcome your comments an the arbitrary redesign of the metabolic pathways chart by these statin strategies, and in particular the demyelinization effects that cause peripheral neuropathy.
I have philosophical problems with the concept of switching off certain pathways and tampering with aminotransferases that took, by design or by evolution, a LONG time to develop in order to produce healthy creatures.
I keep raving that when all this collapses, it will be a trial lawyers' feeding frenzy that will make the thalidomide and the Shiley Heart Valve cases look like stamp money.
Me too. I won't even take the statins prescribed to me because of the potential side effects and I am 54. Also any side effects must be worse on a body that is growing and changing. Giving statins to kids is just nuts!
Do these myopic morons know what they are advocating. Cholesterol is needed by the body to manufacture cell walls and other essential biological entities. Without it you can’t heal. I’ve been taking Lipitor since 1989. If I get injured, sick or just get a cut, I have to stop taking the damn stuff or it will be months to heal even a small cut. Making children take these when they don’t need them is putting their lives in danger. Kids get more injuries than anyone else, thank god they heal quickly. If you take that ability away then the kid will not develop properly.
This is all the more reason to avoid doctors. This doctor must be on the payroll of a pharm company.
As if youngsters aren't already drugged enough with the psychotropic drugs, now they want to add statins. How were children ever raised before without drugs. This is outrageous. Stay away from doctors.
Makes sense. Accepted.
The science IS good on this folks. It is very well estalished that lowering LDL cholesterol will lower your risk of heart attack and stroke. The studies, though are all on adults. I’ve seen lots of obese kids burn it off after puberty in their teens. I really don’t know if high cholesterol in childhood necessarily carries into adulthood with the exception of inherited high cholesterol diseases. I do know that with more and more kids staying obese we are seeing an explosion of diabetes which will be devastating if we can’t convince parents not to let their kids get fat.
My mother is hopelessly addicted to these drugs. She cannot possibly be taken off them. They have ruined her quality of life and affected the whole family. I know a young man who has been put on every possible drug they have been able to find. He is about 5 ft. tall and now awaiting sentencing in jail. The stories go on and on. I have no respect for the doctors who prescribe these quickly.
Once I was at lunch with probably about 8 women. Almost all of them had children or grandchildren on such drugs. It was alarming.
I have read the exact same thing. There is no doubt they lower cholesterol but there is no evidence they increase longevity. We had a friend who became wheelchair bound because of these drugs.
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