HHS HealthBeat (October 3, 2012)

Young cholesterol

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

Not just middle aged adults have cholesterol problems. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says almost 1 in 10 children and teen-agers also have cholesterol problems. And higher cholesterol levels put them on a track that could lead to heart disease as adults.

However, the analysis of 22 years of national data on more than 16,000 young people finds some signs of improvement. At CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, researcher Brian Kit:

“Over the study duration, we found improvements in the blood cholesterol levels among children ages 6 to 19 years of age in the United States.”

Kit says the improvements were over a wide range of racial and ethnic groups.

The study was in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Learn more at healthfinder.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I’m Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: October 3, 2012