ABSTRACT
Introduction There was symptomatic improvement in patients with intermittent claudication who received statin therapy in the study by McDermott et al. There is already some evidence to support this finding from randomized trials, but there is clearly a need for more. Statin therapy in children with familial hypercholesterolaemia (FH) improves endothelial dysfunction (de Jong et a l). This considerably strengthens the case for a randomized placebo-controlled trial of statins in children-there seems little doubt that atherosclerosis is already becoming established in children with FH, but only a clinical trial can establish the safety of statins in this age group.
