The American Academy of Pediatrics has issued new guidelines that call for testing at-risk children’s cholesterol levels from the age of 2, and advise giving some children cholesterol-lowering drugs from the age of 8 in hopes of preventing heart disease later in life. Writing in the journal Pediatrics, doctors say that the recommendations have taken on “a new urgency, given the current epidemic of childhood obesity.”
The new guidelines are likely to stir the controversy over prescribing long-term medications to children, especially for treating symptoms related to obesity, which can also be treated with diet and exercise. 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 that a rash of early heart attacks and diabetes is on the horizon as these children grow up [The New York ...
