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Comments
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Marilyn Mann
April 27, 2010 at 11:56 amI agree this story was lacking in certain respects. The patient who was featured has heterozygous familial hypercholesterolemia (heFH), which occurs in approximately 1/500 people. However, her LDL level, according to the story was 400, which is higher than most people with heFH. Most people with heFH have an LDL level of 250-350. Most of them are treated with statins (and perhaps additional drugs), not with LDL apheresis.
LDL apheresis is almost always necessary for people with *homozygous* FH, but that only occurs in 1/million people.
The bottom line is that very few people need LDL apheresis.
As far as the science goes, it would be observational studies. Randomized placebo-controlled trials are not done on people with such high LDL levels, for ethical reasons.
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