UK Babies May Be Tested For High Cholesterol Say Experts

To crack down on the amount of cases each year of obese children in the UK, the NHS has asked for tests to be carried out on babies as young as 15 months, but is this just another cost cutting exercise or does the Health Service actually care?

Authorities in the UK this week are calling for a new form of screening in children who may have the cholesterol levels in their system which could lead to obesity later in life. Familial hypercholesterolaemia is thought to affect around one in every 500 people in the UK, which taken into account over the total population of the UK, is a considerable amount of people and an equal amount of spending to the NHS each year. It is an inherited condition will obstructs the body's natural way of dealing and getting rid of cholesterol, allowing it to build up in the system over a period of time. To cut the financial strain as well as the general health of a minority of the population, the Journal reported on the idea of the screening which will not only target this particular group but will cut an enormous chunk out of the annual bill for the UK's Health Service. The tests are to carried out on babies as young as 15 months old along side their other vaccinations given at this age. The article published in the British Medical Journal this week has called for the testing so that risk cases could be identified before later on in childhood. The tests will of course, not be able to distinguish who will grow perfectly and who will not be able to control their weight through eating and lack of exercise, but what it will determine is who is at risk when high cholesterol runs in the child's family. It will also tell doctors if a child is also at risk from inherited heart disease even further on in life. Yet the testing will not just identify children who are more at risk from such illnesses, but also help the parents too as the screening will also be offered to them too, according to the same article. The basic screening will use DNA, amongst other methods to screen each child at risk, yet the whole project does still need to have the go ahead from the government, meaning that the actual screening could still be a long way off. In adults, it should distinguish people between the ages of 20 and 39 who have the inherited condition. The condition can be successfully sustained using statins which gradually lowers the level of cholesterol in the system, thus avoid heart disease for the individual in later life. So far people can be pinpointed our of the population simply by looking at previous relatives conditions and how they died. This is a good way of identifying those adults next at risk, but will only pick up on around four-fifths of the population who are at risk. The screening hopes to detect almost everyone. The screening has not yet come under fire from any authoritative body. Leading researchers in the screening and it's benefits from Barts and the London Queen Mary's School of Medicine, have already noted the benefits of the project despite the fact that it's still in it's infancy. The screening will be able to identity children between the ages of one and nine when the levels of cholesterol start to rise. As the child would have got the condition from at least one parent, that parent can be screened at the same time too. Study leader Dr David Wald, is a consultant cardiologist. He said of the project,

"What this proposal does is suggest a way of picking up most cases in the population as whilst you're doing it in children you reach their parents as well."

If children screened were found to have the inherited condition, instead of giving the drugs, a watch on their diet to keep the levels down until adult life. It will also be advised that these children take regular exercise, bu then again, shouldn't we all be doing that anyway? The project will come into operation as soon as the okay has been given by the UK government's health watchdog.