Cholesterol Tests for Your Toddler?

If there were an easy way to predict your child’s future risk of heart disease, would you want to know?

All it may take is a simple blood test, researchers in England have found.

More than 10,000 babies were screened for inherited risk of heart disease during a recent study by researchers at Queen Mary University of London. Researchers found through a routine heel-stick blood test that even in young children, high cholesterol is more than twice as common as originally thought.

Even in young children, high cholesterol is more than twice as common as originally thought.

The study also found that a majority of young parents had hypercholesterolemia, or elevated low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels but didn’t know it — and had passed it onto their children.

For every 1,000 people screened in the study, four children and four parents were identified as being at risk for early heart disease. That’s nearly twice as many as most studies in the past have suggested. Hypercholesterolemia is a genetic disorder that, if left untreated, can raise a person’s risk of a heart attack tenfold by the age of 40.

What physicians know is the earlier people begin treatment, the less likely they are to have complications as they get older. But because statins aren’t recommended until around age 10, there are dietary supplements that can benefit younger children.

Related: Your Child’s Beating, Hurting Heart

Health officials in the U.S. recommend cholesterol screening for children ages nine to 11 and again at 17 to 21 years of age. Typically, however, younger children aren’t tested unless they exhibit other risk factors such as obesity, diabetes, or high blood pressure. Universal screening has traditionally not been recommended, as it “would probably not be feasible or cost-effective.”

Agreeing with that recommendation, Dr. Ramin Oskoui, a cardiologist in the Washington, D.C., area, and CEO of Foxhall Cardiology PC, said universal screening “will most likely cause anxiety among helicopter parents.”

Researchers believe the study should be used to look at how children might be better identified at a younger age so that interventions can begin as early as possible “when treatment has greater benefit.” Yet Oskoui said, “I suspect children would benefit more from recess.”

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