- Researchers say genetic testing can help identify people with a family history known as familial hypercholesteremia.
- They say that identifying the condition can help medical professionals prescribe treatments and interventions.
- Experts recommend that people with this family history have their cholesterol levels checked regularly.
Routine screening for genetic predisposition to high cholesterol could help steer people to potentially life-saving interventions.
That’s according to a new study in which researchers note that people with familial hypercholesteremia have high cholesterol that often can’t be explained by common risk factors such as diet, inactivity, and obesity.
Unlike other people with elevated triglyceride levels in their blood, people with familial hypercholesteremia can’t lower their “bad” cholesterol simply by making dietary or behavioral changes.
However, statins and other medications can help people with this condition, which
“The two most effective classes of medications in this population are statins and PCSK9 inhibitors,” Dr. Cheng-Han Chen, an interventional cardiologist and medical director of the Structural Heart Program at MemorialCare Saddleback Medical Center in California, who wasn’t involved in the study, told Medical News Today.
Before they can start on these medications, however, people with familial hypercholesteremia need to be identified, according to the researchers from Intermountain Health in Salt Lake City, Utah.
“Most of these patients already had tests that showed they had high cholesterol,” said Stacey Knight, PhD, a cardiovascular and genetic epidemiologist at Intermountain Health, in a press statement. “Our findings show that we should be genetic testing people who have unexplained high cholesterol, so we can aggressively treat it and cut down their risk of having a major heart event.”
The researchers presented their findings at the American Heart Association’s
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