Blood donation programs can help reveal donors with genetic disorder for high cholesterol, coronary artery disease, said new study.

‘Blood donation programs may be a method for detecting and notifying donors with genetic disorder familial hypercholesterolemia.’

Blood donation programs already screen for infectious diseases and may be able to screen for other conditions. This analysis included data from about 1.2 million donors who made a total of 3 million blood donations; total cholesterol levels were determined for these donations. 




The authors report that of these donors, 3,473 (1 of every 339) met the criteria for familial hypercholesterolemia, similar to estimates in the general population, which suggests blood donation programs may be a method for detecting and notifying donors with this disorder.
A limitation of the study was the inability to determine whether there were other causes of hypercholesterolemia.
Source-Eurekalert