Familial Hypercholesterolemia: Improving Outcomes with Newer Agents

Familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) is one of the commonest autosomal dominant genetic disorders which affects lipoprotein metabolism in the body, causing thereby severe hypercholesterolemia, mainly contributed by high level of low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDLc). This causes polyvascular premature atherosclerosis with significant mortality, especially in the homozygous form (HoFH), where affected persons die in their teens. There are well developed diagnostic criteria for FH but the index of suspicion of the physician needs to be high to detect heterozygous FH. As the blood LDLc values are very high, even the highest doses of statins cannot bring down the levels to optimum. Life style management should also be rigorously implemented. Ezetimibe imparts some extra 10 to 15% reduction of LDLc on top of maximally tolerated dose of statins. PCSK9I agents are recently approved for FH. They reduce LDLc further by 30-50%. The small interfering RNA, inclisiran, reduces LDLc by almost 60% and has shown clinical benefit in FH patients. Many other newer agents are in the pipe line of development. In extreme cases, plasmapheresis is life saving, but difficult to adopt as a regular long term treatment. Often the absolute target of LDLc level is not achieved even with all available measures, and a more than 50% reduction from the baseline value is all that can be attained. Early diagnosis by screening of first degree relatives of the index case helps to attain long term clinical benefit.