High LDL in Youth Predicts Coronary Calcification Later

Fat kids have high LDL. Fat parents have fat kids.

Young adults whose lipid levels are less than optimal are likely in midlife to develop coronary calcium -- a surrogate measure of coronary artery disease, a large prospective cohort study found.

For young adults ages 18 to 30 years whose low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels were 4.14 mmol/L or greater, the adjusted odds ratio for having coronary calcium two decades later was 5.6 (95% CI 2 to 16) compared with those whose levels were below 1.81 mmol/L, according to Mark J. Pletcher, MD, of the University of California San Francisco, and colleagues.

In an editorial accompanying the study, Gerald S. Berenson, MD, and Sathanur R. Srinivasan, PhD, of Tulane University in New Orleans, observed that the findings suggest that the focus of primary and secondary prevention of coronary atherosclerosis should not focus only on lipids but should be expanded to include primordial prevention among high-risk children, "who have an excess prevalence of interrelated risk factors, an epidemic of obesity, increasing occurrence of diabetes, and heart disease that is out of control as adults."

"Pediatric epidemiologic studies have provided more than sufficient data to awaken interest in primordial prevention, which involves improving lifestyle and health behaviors beginning in childhood before abnormal risk factors develop," Berenson and Srinivasan asserted.

Kudos, fatsos.