Smoke affects children's cholesterol study

WASHINGTON (Reuter) Children who have already inherited a
harmful tendency to high cholesterol levels are in ``triple
jeopardy'' if exposed to cigarette smoke, researchers said
Tuesday.
American Heart Association researchers said they found
passive smoke lowered socalled ``good'' cholesterol, or
highdensity lipoprotein (HDL), by about 10 percent in children
aged two to 18.
HDL protects against heart disease, as compared with
lowdensity lipoprotein (LDL), which is the kind of fat that
gets deposited inside arteries, clogging them up.
Ellis Neufeld and colleagues at Boston Children's Hospital
studied 103 children with elevated cholesterol levels, who had
low HDL levels or a family history of heart disease.
They found 27 percent of them came from smoking households.
Those exposed to tobacco smoke had significantly lowered levels
of HDL.
Unlike similar studies, this one, published in the
association's journal Circulation, took account of the
children's weight, age, sex and how much they ate and exercised.
``To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of
the effect of passive smoking in children with significant
dyslipidemia (unhealthy blood fat levels) and family history of
early heart disease,'' the researchers wrote.
``Such children constitute a group of particular importance,
because currently available data suggest that their longterm
risk will be greater than that of the general population.''
They said nearly 3 million children and teenagers in the
United States alone had very high levels of cholesterol. ``So
many thousands of these youngsters can conceivably benefit from
removing smoke in their environment,'' Neufeld said in a
statement.
``It's hard to make HDL go up 10 percent,'' he added. ``Diet
and exercise can help, but we'd predict that ending exposure to
passive smoke would be at least as effective as these
measures.''

^REUTER@