A new study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association showed that sequential screening for familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) in childhood or early adulthood may be clinically effective but is not cost-effective compared with usual care.

Early detection and treatment of FH might reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease (CVD) because the majority of people with FH go untreated. Therefore, this study was to assess the estimated cost-effectiveness of population sequential FH screening at ages 10 or 18 (lipid testing followed by genetic testing following a high low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) reading).

A hypothetical cohort of 4.2 million US 10-year-olds was used to simulate lifetime health and economic outcomes from the perspective of the health care sect

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