Toddlers should be screened for heart disease

A team from Queen Mary University have suggested that toddlers should be screened for an inherited form of heart disease when they have their routine jabs.

The London university undertook checks on 10,000 one-year-olds for familial hypercholesterolaemia (FH), which is the main cause of early heart disease. If people with it do not take statins to lower their cholesterol, they have a 10-fold increased risk of a heart attack before the age of 40.

Published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) carried out heel-prick blood tests on children, with an average age of 13 months, to check cholesterol and known genetic mutations linked to FH.

40 children were found to be FH positive - and because one of their parents must also be affected by the genetic condition, it meant two people were diagnosed for each positive test.

Consequently, the researchers say routine testing could prevent around 600 heart attacks a year among people under 40 in England and Wales. However, the UK National Screening Committee retains questions about the effectiveness of how programme would work in practice.

Professor David Wald, who led the research, said: "It's the only screening method that stands a reasonable chance of covering the whole population and identifying those at highest risk of an early heart attack."

Professor Sir Nilesh Samani, medical director at the British Heart Foundation (BHF), said: "Early diagnosis in children is likely to substantially improve treatment of their condition and will help find other family members with FH.

"But before nationwide screening is adopted by the NHS, more work needs to be done to show it's a cost-effective way for picking up individuals with FH which will be acceptable to families. Before any future change in practice based on this new research, the widespread rollout of the current cascade testing programme is vital if we're to prevent people unnecessarily dying from FH."