Do you have any questions regarding the Radar broadcast?

On October 12, 2020, the program Radar featured a segment on (hereditary) high cholesterol in its broadcast, titled: “Risks of High Cholesterol: What’s the Truth?”.

According to the LEEFH Foundation, Radar paints an inaccurate picture of the clinical picture of Familial Hypercholesterolemia (“FH”) and the health risks for patients with FH.

For patients with confirmed FH, the scientific consensus is that they have a significantly increased risk of (premature) cardiovascular disease. The cause lies in a genetic abnormality, which leads to significantly elevated LDL cholesterol levels in the blood and causes atherosclerosis to develop more rapidly than in people without FH. Early detection is important to enable patients with FH to choose an effective treatment in consultation with their treating physician. Dutch research shows that children with FH have developed virtually no cardiovascular disease after 20 years of treatment. More than 25% of the parents of these children with FH, who did not receive comparable treatment, had developed cardiovascular disease before the age of 40.

We understand that you may have questions about your treatment following the broadcast. We recommend that you contact your treating physician. For questions about the LEEFH Foundation and FH screening, please contact the LEEFH Foundation at 020-6971014 and info@leefh.nl. You can also contact the Heart Council or share experiences with other patients through the FH community.

You can find more information about FH on our website.

What does FH mean in terms of the risk of cardiovascular disease? Here are a few examples from the scientific literature:

• Patients with confirmed FH have a 10–13 times higher risk of cardiovascular disease. (European Heart, consensus statement, Nordestgaard, 2013).
• For patients with LDL cholesterol > 4.8 mmol and genetically confirmed FH, this risk is 22 times higher than for people without FH who have normal LDL cholesterol. (Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Khera, 2016).
• By the age of 45, 11% of patients with FH have had some form of cardiovascular disease, compared with only 1.1% of the general population without an FH mutation. (Nature Medicine, Grzymski, 2020).
• In a group of parents with FH who began therapy after age³⁰, 26% developed cardiovascular disease before age⁴⁰, while their children with FH who received treatment developed virtually no cardiovascular disease. (NEJM, Wiegman, 2019).

Early detection of FH is therefore important. There are effective treatment options for FH. Patients with FH and their treating physician work together to find an approach that suits the patient. It’s about looking at the big picture, where there may be multiple risk factors and where the approach varies from patient to patient—in part because the effects of treatment differ from patient to patient.

About the LEEFH Foundation:

The LEEFH Foundation does not treat patients with FH, but focuses on screening. The LEEFH Foundation was established after the FH population screening program was discontinued in 2013. A network of 27 hospitals (LEEFH centers) has since been formed, all of which work together on screening. At the LEEFH Foundation, many experts volunteer (in the interest of patients with FH) to serve on various committees to facilitate screening—and thus early treatment. As a small national foundation, we are committed to raising awareness about FH and screening through campaigns (“high cholesterol can be hereditary”), advocating for the reinstatement of the FH population screening program, and have developed educational materials for patients and primary care physicians. We have relied on donors and sponsors to cover the costs of these efforts. We are completely independent and transparent in our messaging. LEEFH’s screening activities are funded through insured healthcare, and health insurers are involved in the screening process.