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Cholesterol trajectories throughout childhood and associations with growth and carotid intima-media thickeness
Safe People
University of Nottingham
Academic Institute
Laila J TataProfessor Nadeem QureshiProfessor Steve Humphries
Safe Projects
B3815
Cholesterol is a type of fat that is essential for our body to work well. Among its roles, it helps the body make use of hormones and vitamins. Our bodies make cholesterol, but we also get cholesterol from food. When we eat too many foods high in fat we can start to have a build-up of cholesterol in our bodies, especially in our blood vessels. We know that having too much bad cholesterol (called Low-Density Lipoprotein or LDL-cholesterol) in our blood can result in forming a layer that sticks to the inside walls of our blood vessels, making them thinner and sometimes blocking them, which can result heart disease, such as having a heart attack.
We believe this study will provide important information in characterising cholesterol profiles in childhood and that this information will fill an important evidence gap that will be valuable for many studies of cardiovascular health not only in the UK but internationally. As described in the previous section, in addition to providing standalone valuable information for the general population of children and useful information for predicting future risk of cardiovascular health, this ALSPAC analysis will be used to provide more immediate impact for informing a study on the treatment of FH in childhood. We will assess whether cholesterol trajectories in children with untreated FH are similar to those in the general ALSPAC population, or how they differ. We will also use information from the ALSPAC study to model the risk of early evidence of atherosclerosis in children with FH because there are no available following up children with FH long enough to incorporate childhood and early adulthood. The latter will inform our economic models to estimate the benefits of starting statins at different ages in childhood. By the end of the 5-year project on FH, we aim to provide clearer evidence on what age and LDL-C level children with FH should ideally start statins, based on their clinical risk profile. The impact could be changing or strengthening current clinical guidelines in treatment of FH.
21/06/2021