Healthy Skepticism Library item: 13926

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Goozner M.
Fat Kids? Feed 'em Statins and Supplements
Gooznews (blog) 2008 Jul 8
http://www.gooznews.com/archives/001107.html

Full text:

The American Academy of Pediatricians provoked an instantaneous uproar yesterday after releasing new guidelines calling for screening kids for high cholesterol and prescribing statin drugs if diet and exercise interventions don’t work. The New York Times’ Tara Parker-Pope was forced to print a reaction story today that included all the critical comments left out of the previous day’s report.

“What are the data that show this is helpful preventing heart attacks?” asked Dr. Darshak Sanghavi, a pediatric cardiologist and assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. “How many heart attacks do we hope to prevent this way? There’s no data regarding that.”
Nor, Dr. Sanghavi added, are there data on the possible side effects of taking statins for 40 or 50 years.

Other doctors said the recommendation would distract from common-sense changes in diet and exercise, which are also part of the new guidelines.

“To be frank, I’m embarrassed for the A.A.P. today,” said Dr. Lawrence Rosen of Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey, vice chairman of an academy panel on traditional and alternative medicine. He added: “Treatment with medications in the absence of any clear data? I hope they’re ready for the public backlash.”

How hard would it have been to include those perspectives in the original story?

Here’s something else that was left out of all the stories. A lot of bloggers, and even Parker-Pope in today’s story, focused on possible financial ties to statin manufacturers of the seven physicians who wrote the guidelines for the AAP. I briefly checked out that possibility yesterday since the AAP in-house journal Pediatrics, which published the guidelines, failed to include a conflict of interest disclosure statement even though the journal has a policy requiring such statements.

I didn’t come up with much on statins. But Jatinder Bhatia, who sat on the committee and was prominently quoted by Parker-Pope in her first story, has disclosed elsewhere that he is consultant and speaker for Mead Johnson, a unit of Bristol Myers-Squibb best known for its line of infant formulas (Enfamil). It also makes supplement-enhanced foods aimed at young kids. The AAP itself has numerous financial ties to manufacturers of enhanced foods.

Is that relevant? Should it have been disclosed? Here’s a couple of other lines from the guidelines:

Increasing the intake of soluble fiber can be helpful in reducing plasma LDL concentration. . .
Plant stanols and sterols are added to a number of products, including spreads and margarine, orange juice, yogurt drinks, cereal bars, and dietary supplements. These compounds lower the absorption of dietary cholesterol and, in adults, have been shown to reduce cholesterol concentration by approximately 5% to 10% with minimal adverse effects.

Mead Johnson makes kid foods with added fiber. Yoplait markets a line of “heart healthy” yogurts. I don’t know if Dannon does, but that firm is clearly a competitor of Yoplait. Besides Bhatia’s ties to Mead Johnson, Nicolas Stettler, another panel member, sits on the board of the Dannon Institute, a non-profit research wholly funded and housed within the Dannon Yogurt Co.

While everyone is focused on the statin angle, the subtext here may be functional foods. Ads touting “heart healthy” brands for fat kids — now recommended by the nation’s pediatricians — may be just around the corner.

Just what they need. More food advertising.