May 17, 2011

Cardiobrief raises questions of disease-mongering & conflicts of interest in familial hypercholesterolemia guidance

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Marilyn Mann

May 17, 2011 at 9:11 pm

There is no question that FH is a genuine disease, one that causes early heart disease in a high percentage of cases if untreated. I think where the disease mongering comes in is in an “awareness” campaign aimed at the general public. This just isn’t going to work if your aim is really to diagnose people with FH. FH is just not a disease the average person can self-diagnose. It takes a knowledgeable person to do it. So to the extent this campaign motivates anyone to go to their doctor to ask if they have FH, the yield will be very low. Only 1/500 people in the U.S. have heterozygous FH, so most of those people will not turn out to have it.
Some of them will get put on a statin anyway though!

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