An article from SRN News is reporting that a lot of people with familial hypercholesterolemia are going through life without getting the treatments that could help them, such as statins. This is a matter of concern because high LDL cholesterol levels can greatly increase the risk of health emergencies such as stroke and heart attack.
Familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) is a genetically linked condition in which an affected person is predisposed to having extremely high levels of LDL cholesterol, which is widely known to dramatically increase the risk of potential medical emergencies. While most people with this condition can get successful treatment with a high dose statin regimen, this is not effective in some people, who may have to take additional medications, get a liver transplant, or have cholesterol filtered out in a process similar to dialysis. People with familial hypercholesterolemia may have cholesterol-rich fat deposits along the limb joints and above the eyes. To learn more about familial hypercholesterolemia, click here.
A recent study found that, at this juncture, only about 52 percent of people that have FH were taking statins. While statins may not always be effective for FH, almost any medical professional will tell that all FH patients should have at least tried them, and statins should still be at least a part of treatment in most cases of FH. In fact, doctors recommend that anyone with LDL cholesterol levels over 190mg per decileter should be taking them, and levels in FH can often be dramatically higher than that.
People that were older, had insurance, and had been diagnosed with diabetes or high blood pressure were more likely to take statins. As a long term study, the percentage of people taking statins that had severely high cholesterol increased from 29 to 48 percent.
