Heterozygous familial hypercholesterolaemia in specialist centres in South Africa, Australia and Brazil: Importance of early detection and lifestyle advice

Familial hypercholesterolaemia (FH) is the commonest monogenic disorder that accelerates atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. We compared and contrasted the characteristics of patients from three specialist centres in the southern hemisphere. Adult index-cases with molecularly diagnosed heterozygous FH attending specialist lipid centres in Cape Town, Perth and São Paulo were studied. Myocardial infarction, revascularisation, hypertension, diabetes, smoking and lipid-lowering treatment were recorded at the time of diagnosis and compared across the three centres. The spectrum of genetic variants causative of FH was significantly different in patients attending the centres in South Africa compared with Australia and Brazil. Hypertension and diabetes were more prevalent in Brazilian and Australian patients, than in South African patients, but the frequency of smoking was significantly greater in South Africa than the other two centres (p