Wow, here is a article I read today. what if we could teach children proper nutrition and not give them all these drugs. Have you read the side effects to drugs. The drug is minimizing the symptoms, but not solving the problem. If you want to give your child something to help them, then give them Mona-Vie. It is not a drug, it a nutritional beverage, and it helps lower cholesterol, diabetes, high blood pressure and more. (approved my the heart association) I give my son two shots of Mona-Vie original everyday.
Pediatricians pushing to medicate kids as young as 8 to prevent heart trouble
The new guidelines, issued today by the American Academy of Pediatrics, also call for giving children low-fat milk after 12 months of age.
The push to aggressively screen and medicate for high cholesterol in children is certain to spark controversy amidst 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 a rash of early heart attacks and diabetes is on the horizon as these children grow up.
The academy estimates that under the current guidelines for cholesterol screening, between 30 percent and 60 percent of children with high cholesterol are being missed. And for some children, cholesterol-lowering drugs, called statins, may be their best hope for lowering their risk for early heart attack, proponents say.
"We are in an epidemic," says Dr. Jatinder Bhatia, a member of the academy's nutrition committee, which is making 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."
Bhatia said that while there is not "a whole lot" of data on pediatric use of cholesterol-lowering drugs, recent research does show that the drugs are generally safe for children.
Surprisingly, the paper published in the medical journal Pediatrics that explains the new guidelines notes that among children average total cholesterol levels, as well as LDL and HDL cholesterol, have remained stable, while triglyceride levels have dropped, based on data collected from 1988 to 2000.
The recommendations call for cholesterol screening of children and adolescents, starting as early as age 2 and no later than age 10, if they come from families with a history of high cholesterol or heart attacks before the age of 55 for men and 65 for women.
Screening is also recommended for children when family history is not known, or if they have other risk factors, such as being at or above the 85th percentile for weight.
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