The American Academy of Pediatrics has changed its guidelines, recommending testing of overweight kids or those with a family history of heart disease for high cholesterol at age two, and prescribing statins, if deemed appropriate, as early as age eight.

The news caused furor because the new recommendations will encourage the use of drugs whose long-term effects on children are not fully understood. AAP says that the statin medications should be targeted to very high-risk children, but the move is part of trend which will only get more inclined towards using more drugs to treat children.

The high risk kids are considered those who have:

* LDL levels of 190 mg/dL or higher

* LDL levels of 160 mg/dL or higher if there is a family history of heart disease or two other risk factors

* LDL levels of 130 mg/dL or higher if the child has type 1 or type 2 diabetes

The American Academy of Pediatrics' guideline change on cholesterol drugs is the first in more than a decade. The change was also triggered by the fact that now around 30 percent of American children are overweight, exposing them to risks of cardiovascular disease, which have a higher prevalence in males. The American Academy of Pediatrics also noted the subsequent increasing risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus hypertension, and cardiovascular disease in older children and adults which results from childhood obesity.

Also, the AAP recommended low-fat dairy products for children from ages 12 months to 2 years. The latter age is also the time to start testing for cholesterol levels in some categories of children who are facing higher risks.

In late March it was revealed that U.S. spent $1.5 billion in 2006 on Vytorin, a cholesterol drug that actually does not work better than an older drug, which is sold for a fifth of Vytorin’s price.

Researchers discovered that the cholesterol pill produced by Schering-Plough Corp. and Merck & Co., which was prescribed 20 million times last year, actually did not slow the clogging of arteries better than Merck’s Zocor, which is much cheaper.

A key cardiologist who worked with Merck and Schering-Plough on a comprehensive study on their joint drug Vytorin has said in April that the two companies delayed releasing the study in order to avoid damaging their successful cholesterol franchise. It's enough to mention that the Enhance trial had finished back in 2006, and the data weren’t made public until January of this year.