Oral presentation at HEART UK Annual Conference

Posted on 11 September 2024

CRD Research Fellow Alexis Llewellyn presented the results of a systematic review and network meta-analysis of lipid lowering therapies in children with heterozygous familial hypercholesterolaemia (HeFH) at the 2024 HEART UK Annual Conference held at the University of Warwick in July.

HeFH is a common inherited metabolic disease that causes high levels of LDL ("bad") cholesterol in the blood. It affects approximately 1 in 250 children and adults worldwide. This systematic review evaluated the effectiveness and safety of statins, with or without ezetimibe in children with HeFH. The review found that statins, ezetimibe and statins+ezetimibe are all effective at reducing LDL-cholesterol and generally well-tolerated treatments for children with HeFH. Treatment dosage and combination are likely to affect the magnitude of LDL-C reductions.

This project was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research [NIHR134993], and is part of a 5-year collaboration between the University of York (CRD and the Centre for Health Economics) and the University of Nottingham, that includes a UK registry study and an economic model evaluating the long-term effect and cost-effectiveness of lipid-lowering therapies for children with HeFH.

Conference abstract

The systematic review has been published online: Llewellyn A, Simmonds M, Marshall D, Harden M, Woods B, Humphries SE, Ramaswami U, Priestley-Barnham L, Fisher M, Tata LJ, Qureshi N. Efficacy and safety of statins, ezetimibe and statins-ezetimibe therapies for children and adolescents with heterozygous familial hypercholesterolaemia: systematic review, pairwise and network meta-analyses of randomised controlled trials. Atherosclerosis 2024 Sep 28.

HEART UK Annual Conference 2024