New study identifies teens at risk of developing heart disease

Queen’s University researchers have developed new criteria to identify teenagers with abnormal blood cholesterol levels that place them at risk of cardiovascular disease later in life.
Co-authored by Professor Ian Janssen and Master of Science student Courtney Jolliffe from the university’s School of Kinesiology and Health Studies, the study appears on-line today in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.”Several landmark studies have established that the buildup of fatty plaque in the arteries that can lead to potentially deadly conditions starts in childhood,” says Dr. Janssen. “This is the first attempt to develop an age- and gender-based cholesterol evaluation system from adolescents.”Currently-used thresholds identify people ages 2 to 19 years old with abnormal total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol and triglyceride levels. But research has shown that those thresholds have limited ability to identify those teens who, as adults, will have high-risk blood cholesterol and fat levels.”Right now, cut-off points to determine which teens have high-risk blood cholesterol and fat levels don’t take age into account,” Dr. Janssen explains. “This is problematic since as adolescents age, blood cholesterol levels that place them at high risk of developing cardiovascular disease in adulthood change naturally.”To create the new classification system, the researchers used total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, HDL cholesterol and triglyceride measurements of more than 6,000 people ages 12 to 20 years. The data were used to develop age- and gender-specific growth curves similar to the ones that monitor height and weight patterns in children and adolescents. The curves were then linked to adult blood cholesterol and fat levels that are known to predict cardiovascular risk.”By linking the teen thresholds to adult thresholds that have been proven to carry cardiovascular risks, we have created real risk-associated cut-off points,” says Dr. Janssen, adding that the new guidelines reflect the natural fluctuations in cholesterol levels that occur with growth and maturation. “This will help to ensure that teens may not be misdiagnosed simply because they are on a different part of the growth curve than other teens.”Because the process of developing cardiovascular disease begins at a very early age, it is imperative to start considering whether people are at risk when they are younger, the researcher believes. “This new system should provide an improved strategy for identifying teens at high risk, so we can intervene earlier.”(Source: Journal of the American Heart Association: Queen’s University: August 2006).