Secondary Dyslipidemia In Obese Children - Is There Evidence For Pharmacological Treatment?

BACKGROUND

Long-term safety, effectiveness and criteria for treatment with statins in children are still unclear in clinical practice. There is very limited evidence for the use of medication to treat children with dyslipidemia secondary to obesity who do not respond well to lifestyle modification.

OBJECTIVE

Systematic review of randomized clinical trials of statin use to treat children and adolescents with dyslipidemia secondary to obesity.

METHODS

We performed a search in PubMed, EMBASE, Bireme, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, SciELO, and LILACS for data to evaluate the effect of statins on: improvement of surrogate markers of coronary artery disease in clinical outcomes of adulthood; increased serum levels of total cholesterol (TC), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) and apolipropotein B (APOB); and decreased serum levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) from inception to February 2016. Participants were children and adolescents.

RESULTS

Of the 16793 potentially relevant citations recovered from the electronic databases, no randomized clinical trials fulfilled the inclusion criteria for children with dyslipidemia secondary to obesity.

CONCLUSIONS

We found no specific evidence to consider statins in the treatment of hypercholesterolemia secondary to obesity in children. The usual practice of extrapolating findings from studies in genetic dyslipidemia ignores the differences in long-term cardiovascular risks and the long-term drug treatment risks, when compared to recommendation of lifestyle changes. Randomized clinical trials are needed to understand drug treatment in dyslipidemia secondary to obesity.