
,



* Direction de santé publique de Montréal-Centre, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Division of Preventive Medicine, McGill University Health Center, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
|| Department of Nutrition, University of Montreal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
¶ Research Center, Ste-Justine Hospital, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
# Department of Clinical Biochemistry, Ste-Justine Hospital and University of Montreal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
** Division of Medical Genetics, Ste-Justine Hospital, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Department of Pediatrics, University of Montreal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
| ABSTRACT |
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Methods. Data were available from a population-based survey of 3665 Quebec youths aged 9, 13, and 16 years (81.2% of eligible subjects). Blood specimens were collected from 2475 subjects (54.8% of those eligible), and questionnaire data were obtained from 3048 parents (67.5% of those eligible). Lipids were measured in a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention standardized laboratory. Usefulness of parent history in identifying borderline/high low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) (
2.8 mmol/L [
110 mg/dL]) and high LDL-C (
3.4 mmol/L [
130 mg/dL]) was assessed according to test performance statistics (sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value).
Results. The prevalence of a positive parent history was 25.6%; 18.3% of subjects had borderline/high LDL-C, and 4.8% had high LDL-C. Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value of parent history were 33.1%, 76.0%, 23.7%, and 83.5%, respectively, for identifying borderline/high LDL-C; they were 40.7%, 75.1%, 7.7%, and 96.1% for identifying high LDL-C. Test performance statistics were not improved in subgroups defined according to age, gender, parent education, household income, family status, and family origin (French Canadian, other); neither were they improved by adding screening criteria (parent history of diabetes or hypertension, or youth overweight).
Conclusion. Parent history screening criteria offer little improvement over random population screening in identifying youths with hypercholesterolemia.
Key Words: screening children adolescent cholesterol family history sensitivity specificity positive predictive value negative predictive value
Abbreviations: CVD, cardiovascular disease AAP, American Academy of Pediatrics LDL-C, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol PPV, positive predictive value QCAHSS, Quebec Child and Adolescent Health and Social Survey CV, coefficient of variation TC, total cholesterol TG, triglycerides NPV, negative predictive value
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) represents an immense public health burden, accounting for 15 million deaths worldwide each year, or
30% of all mortality.1 Studies have linked blood cholesterol, atherosclerosis, and CVD mortality/morbidity, establishing hypercholesterolemia as a risk factor for CVD.24 There is evidence that atherosclerosis begins in childhood and adolescence5,6 and that CVD risk factors track from childhood into adulthood.710
To reduce the burden of CVD, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends cholesterol screening in childhood and adolescence,11 with accompanying recommendations for the management of hypercholesterolemia cases identified through screening. The 1998 AAP recommendations state that youths aged 2 years or older should be screened for high cholesterol if they have a family history of premature CVD (
55 years of age) or a parent history of hypercholesterolemia (240 mg/dL [6.2 mmol/L] or higher). For youths whose family history is not available and/or for those with other CVD risk factors, screening is recommended at the physicians discretion. In the AAP recommendations, hypercholesteremia in screened youths is defined by blood low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) level; LDL-C levels
2.8 mmol/L (110 mg/dL) and <3.4 mmol/L (130 mg/dL) are defined as borderline. LDL-C levels
3.4 mmol/L (130 mg/dL) are defined as high.
As for any systematic screening recommendation, it is important to establish the usefulness of the screening criteria in correctly identifying the individuals targeted.1214 Costs incurred through unnecessary diagnostic tests for false-positive results and psychological sequelae related to being labeled at risk for CVD as a result of the screening test15,16 must not outweigh the benefits of screening. In addition, misleading reassurance may be associated with false-negative results. Past studies that have used family history screening criteria similar to those recommended by the AAP1723 suggest that the AAP criteria are not useful in identifying youths with raised blood cholesterol levels. However, few studies were population based, how unknown family history was analyzed varied and was sometimes unspecified, and most studies were published before the 1998 AAP recommendations were released.
The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the usefulness of the 1998 AAP family history criteria to screen youths for raised LDL-C in a representative, population-based sample. Two test performance statistics were considered to be especially important: 1) that family history criteria be better at selectively identifying youths with high LDL-C than simply screening the entire population12 (ie, that the positive predictive value [PPV] be high) and 2) that many more youths with borderline or high LDL-C be identified by the screening criteria than youths with normal LDL-C (ie, that the likelihood ratio be considerably >1). Secondary objectives were to assess the performance of the AAP screening criteria in selected subpopulations12,23,24 and when screening criteria were expanded to include additional risk factors for CVD.25
| METHODS |
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Of 3665 subjects overall (response proportion: 81.2%), 831 had parent questionnaire data but no lipid data, 258 had lipid data but no parent questionnaire data, and 359 had neither parent nor lipid data. The analysis presented here therefore included 2217 subjects with data from both parent questionnaires and the blood draw.
Parent History
Self-reported parent history of hypercholesterolemia and CVD was obtained in 5 questions asked of the biological parents: 1) Has a doctor, nurse, or other health professional ever said that you have a high cholesterol level? 2) Do you take any medications to lower cholesterol level? 3) Have you ever had a heart attack or angina? 4) Have you ever had a stroke, cerebral vascular disease, or peripheral vascular disease? 5) Do you take any medications for the heart?
Parent history was coded as positive when there was a "yes" response to 1 or more of the 5 questions, for 1 or both biological parents. Parent history was coded as negative when both parents responded "no" to all 5 questions. Parent history was classified as unknown when there were no "yes" responses for either biological parent and when there was at least 1 "dont know" or 1 missing response. No information was available on grandparent history.
Lipid Measurement
Blood was collected by venipuncture after an overnight fast, in a 1-mg/mL ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid collection tube. Samples were placed on ice, centrifuged on site, frozen on dry ice, and sent within 24 hours to the laboratory, where they were stored at 80°C until analysis. Plasma lipid concentrations were determined on a Synchron Cx7 (Beckman Instruments, Brea, CA) with Beckman Instruments reagents as previously described.26 Standardization was conducted according to the recommendations of the International Federation of Clinical Chemistry. Interassay coefficient of variation (CV) for total cholesterol (TC) measurements with controls at 2.91, 3.98, 5.55, and 7.45 mmol/L ranged from 1.1% to 1.4%; interassay CVs for high-density lipoprotein cholesterol with controls at 0.56 and 1.63 mmol/L were 3.6% and 4.3%, respectively; interassay CVs for triglycerides (TG) with controls at 1.05, 1.40, 2.13, and 5.12 mmol/L ranged from 3.9% to 5.4%. LDL-C concentrations were calculated according to the Friedewald equation.27
Analysis
All analyses were conducted using data weighted within age groups to ensure that samples were representative of the Quebec population. In addition, given the fixed sample size in each school, the sample was corrected for overweighting of smaller schools. We computed test performance statistics of parent history in identifying subjects with elevated blood cholesterol levels using two cutoffs: 1)
2.8 mmol/L and 2)
3.4 mmol/L. Test statistics included sensitivity (the proportion of subjects with elevated LDL-C correctly identified by parent history as having elevated LDL-C), specificity (the proportion of subjects without elevated LDL-C [ie, <2.8 mmol/L] correctly identified by parent history as not having elevated LDL-C), PPV (the proportion of subjects who have a positive parent history and elevated LDL-C), negative predictive value (NPV; the proportion of subjects who have a negative parent history and do not have an elevated LDL-C), and finally the likelihood ratio (the ratio of sensitivity to the probability that parent history incorrectly identified youths with normal LDL-C as having elevated LDL-C; this is equivalent to the ratio of sensitivity to 100 specificity when test statistics are expressed as percentages).
Of 2217 subjects, 176 had responses to the parent questionnaire but were missing data for 1 or more parent history items. There was no substantive difference in the proportion of subjects with missing parent history data with or without lipid data. Subjects with missing parent history data were coded as having unknown parent history. Test performance statistics were computed first excluding subjects with unknown parent history and then including these subjects and treating parent history as negative.
| RESULTS |
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Approximately one quarter of parents reported a history of hypercholesterolemia and/or CVD (Table 1). The prevalence of parent history increased with subjects age, from 21.5% of parents of 9-year-olds to 29.9% of parents of 16-year-olds. In all ages combined, the prevalence of borderline and high LDL-C was 18.3%; 4.8% of the sample had high LDL-C (Table 2).
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In additional secondary analyses, we examined whether test performance statistics could be improved by adding easily accessible and highly prevalent characteristics of parents and youths to the parent history criteria. These included parent history of diabetes (5.4% of subjects had parents with self-reported diabetes), parent history of hypertension (reported by 17.5% of parents), and youths overweight (15.6% according to body mass index
age and gender-specific 85th percentile of the study population). Again, test performance statistics were not improved and in general were made even worse. The maximum difference obtained between population prevalences and PPVs was 5.4%, and the largest likelihood ratio was 1.70.
| DISCUSSION |
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Test performance statistics for family history in previously reported studies in small or select study populations range from 25% to 93% for sensitivity, 21% to 79.7% for specificity, 11.6 to 45% for PPV, 68.6% to 95% for NPV, and 0.91 to 1.64 for likelihood ratios.1723 The difference between the PPV and the corresponding prevalence of raised blood cholesterol in the general study population ranged between 1.8 and 10.7.
Our results support the previous findings suggesting that self-reported parent history is not useful in identifying children and adolescents with raised LDL-C levels. Many youths with raised LDL-C will not be identified by the 1998 AAP screening criteria; also, many will be identified incorrectly as at risk. Moreover, applying the parent history criteria to identify youths at risk is no more effective than general population screening.
We suggest that the most likely reason for these results is the inaccuracy of parent self-reports of CVD history and hypercholesterolemia. Poor accuracy of self-reports has been found consistently for hypercholesterolemia2933 and many other health-related variables.33 A recent report on the accuracy of adults knowledge of their cholesterol status using National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey data34 showed that 60% of adults 20 years or older with hypercholesterolemia (LDL-C
5.2 mmol/L, as detected by measurement of blood lipids) were unaware of their condition, and only 15% were being treated for it. If these findings can be extended to the situation among Quebec parents of youths between 9 and 16 years, then many parents who met the screening criteria would have been unaware of their status, limiting its information value as a screening criterion.
Limitations
Several limitations may have contributed to the poor performance of the 1998 AAP parent history criteria in this study. First, a single measure of LDL-C was used, rather than the average of 2 measures as recommended by the AAP. Second the response to the blood draw was relatively low, although no differences in the response proportion for blood draw were noted according to gender, pubertal status, smoking, weight status, or parent history of CVD or CVD risk factors including smoking, parent education level, household income, and rural or urban status of the school. Third, our family history criteria were not identical to the AAP criteria because the QCAHSS did not collect data on parent age at diagnosis of CVD (to define early CVD) or grandparent history of CVD. However, only 6 of 135 parents with a positive history were aged 55 years or older. It is also unlikely that lack of data on grandparent history influenced the findings. In most clinical situations in which family history is identified, grandparent history is collected from 1 parent or the youth, which would likely reduce its accuracy relative to parent history of CVD. Considering this and that parent history seemed to identify more false positives than true positives, it is doubtful that grandparent history would prove a useful addition to the parent history criteria. Finally, we included the question, "Do you (biological mother and father) take any medications for the heart?" which was not an AAP criterion, to categorize family history. Inclusion of this additional item might have improved test performance statistics.
| CONCLUSION |
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| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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| FOOTNOTES |
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Reprint requests to (J.O.) Direction de santé publique de Montreal-Centre, 1301 Sherbrooke St East, Montreal (Quebec) H2L 1M3. E-mail: jennifer.oloughlin{at}mcgill.ca
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