Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 20, 1994 TAG: 9401200042
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CLEARWATER, FLA. LENGTH: Medium
The disorder - called familial hypercholesterolemia, or FH - can be treated with drugs to prevent most of those deaths, if the victims can be found, said Dr. Roger R. Williams of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.
"Preventable deaths from FH each year are equivalent to 10 to 20 jumbo jets crashing," he said. "Perhaps even more tragic, 500,000 persons in the United States with FH already hold reservations on some future fatal flight, most of them without even knowing it."
Men with the disorder frequently die of heart attacks by age 45, Williams said at a science writers' meeting sponsored by the American Heart Association.
Williams and colleagues around the country have begun a campaign to find the victims of FH and get them to doctors who can treat them.
The screening program began with a grant from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and $150,000 from Merck & Co., which is among the pharmaceutical companies that make the drugs, he said.
Some Heart Association chapters are participating in the program, he said.
"We're very interested in it," said the president of the association, Dr. James Moller of the University of Minnesota. "We're actively looking for ways we can participate in it."
Many doctors do not properly diagnose FH, Williams said, even though its victims have extremely high cholesterol levels.
In a study of 502 people Williams determined were carrying the FH gene, only 31 percent had been correctly diagnosed by their doctors, he said. Only 42 percent were taking cholesterol-lowering drugs, which is critical to prevent heart attacks in these patients, Williams said.
by CNB