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Less than one percent of American children - or about 200,000 young people - need to take cholesterol-lowering drugs, according to a new study in the journal Circulation.

Dr. Stephen Daniels and his colleagues examined data on 10,000 children who participated in a national health survey. About 2,700 had been checked for LDL levels, and of those, between five and seven percent had elevated levels. Using guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the researchers determined that only 0.8 percent of those who were studied should take drugs that lower cholesterol.

The Academy recommended last year that even children as young as eight should take such medications if they had conditions such as obesity and high blood pressure.

Labels: cholesterol, medications

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Recently, the American Academy of Pediatrics made news by recommending statin drugs and cholesterol-screenings for at-risk children ages 2 to 19 years old.

Now a new study shows that hundreds of thousands of children are already taking cholesterol-lowering drugs or medications to treat diabetes, high blood pressure, or acid reflux - all conditions related to obesity.

Three major drug companies estimated that about 1 percent of their sales of such drugs are for pediatric patients. The number of children taking them could be as high as 4 million.

The biggest increase is in children being treated for Type 2 diabetes, with drug usage increasing 137 percent in seven years.

Dr. Francine Kaufman, a pediatric endocrinologist in Los Angeles, said, "Children deserve to be treated. I think the slant from most of the media is that pediatricians are jumping to put kids on medications. That's not true at all. Since lifestyle is so difficult, we have no other choice but to go to pharmacotherapy."

Labels: medications, anti-obesity, pills

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Prescription data from three organizations shows that a growing number of American children are taking medications for obesity-related conditions.

"The numbers... indicate that hundreds of thousands of children are taking medication to treat type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and acid reflux - all problems linked to obesity that were practically unheard of in children two decades ago."

The greatest increase was in type 2 diabetes medication, which saw a 151 percent jump between 2001 and 2007. Source: The New York Times

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Should eight-year-olds take anti-cholesterol medications? Yes, say new guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The new advice calls for doctors to screen all children ages two to ten for risk factors of heart disease (such as childhood obesity or family histories). If a child's cholesterol readings are too high, and if lifestyle changes such as better diet and more exercise do not help, then the AAP advises doctors to prescribe statin drugs - even to children as young as eight.

"We're in an epidemic," said Dr. Jatinder Bhatia, professor of neonatology at the Medical College of Georgia. "The risk of giving statins at a lower age is less than the benefit you're going to get out of it."

Others disagree, with many pointing out that because the drugs have only been around since the mid-1980s, no one is sure of the long-term effects they may have on the children to whom they are given.

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An influential group of doctors from the American Academy of Pediatrics has caused a heated debate by recommending that some children as young as eight be given the cholesterol-lowering medication statins. Statins has been shown to lower cholesterol in adults, but its effects on children are not well-known.

"The authors of the recommendation from the American Academy of Pediatrics concluded that there is enough indirect evidence to suggest that starting treatment early makes sense in children with extremely high levels of cholesterol... They call for cholesterol testing for millions of children ages 2 to 10 who have a family history of early heart disease or have other risk factors such as being overweight or having high blood pressure."

Under the recommended guidelines, less than one percent of children would be considered for the medication. Despite that, many doctors and other medical experts warn that too little is known about how statins affect children. Others are concerned that medication will replace preventative programs that focus on diet and exercise. Source: The Morning Call

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Dr. Fuad Ziai, a pediatric endocrinologist in Oak Lawn, Illinois, prescribed Adderall, a drug typically prescribed to treat attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD to an 11-year-old patient who was 30 pounds overweight. Adderall is in the amphetamine family and are well-known appetite suppressants.

"Ziai's approach to treating obesity - he says he has prescribed Adderall for weight loss to about 800 children and teens - raises an important ethical question: Has the obesity epidemic among children become so severe that it's OK to prescribe a drug not approved for weight loss when the drug can have serious, sometimes life-threatening side effects?"

The child's parents say they'd do again  they say that their son avoided developing diabetes because of the Adderall.

But, the Food and Drug Administration warns that some who take Adderall develop psychiatric problems and pediatricians say it's wrong to prescribe Adderall for weight loss. Read more at CNN.com.

Labels: diabetes, medications, ethics

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A study from Consumer Reports concluded that prescribing cholesterol-lowering drugs to children may not be worth the risk to their health.

The authors noted that no long-term studies can prove that the pediatric use of statin drugs reduces risk of heart disease in adulthood. No one knows the long-term effects of these drugs on a child's developing central nervous system, immune system, organs, and hormones. The authors concluded, however, that the decision to use statins must be based on each individual case, and is in the hands of the child's physician and parents.

"Contrary to what many consumers believe, we don't have solid medical evidence supporting the use of statins in children, and there is no long-term safety data tracking kids who take statins for ten or 20 years," said Dr. John Santa, director of the Consumer Reports Health Ratings Center.
 

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About two million prescriptions for cholesterol-lowering drugs were written for overweight children last year. However, the Consumer Reports Health Rating Center recently released a report that said, these drugs, known as statins, have no proven record of safety or effectiveness when used on young children. No one knows the harm that drugs might do to a child's developing organs, and no one knows if they prevent heart disease in adulthood, according to the report.

In 2008, the American Academy of Pediatrics okayed the drugs for children ages eight years old and above, and advised doctors to give cholesterol tests to even two-year-olds at risk for obesity.

Dr. John Santa, a medical doctor who works for Consumer Reports, is telling parents that he might not want to use cholesterol-lowering drugs on children who have no risk factors for heart disease. Risk factors include being overweight or obese, diabetes, a family history of heart disease and smoking. He advises parents to discuss the situation with their doctors and try to help the children lower their cholesterol levels through diet and exercise before using drugs.
 

Labels: cholesterol, medications

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