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What point would you like to add to this interview?
I would like to add: At what point do you suggest testing their boyfriend's or girlfriend's cholesterol levels?
It is important for a person with FH to know whether their fiancée may also have FH, however remote that chance may be. The rational behind this is that the couple will know ahead of time the odds of passing on the FH gene to their children. For example, if they marry someone who does not have FH, they can be reassured that each child that is born will only have a 1 in 2 chance of also inheriting heterozygous FH.
However, if they marry someone with FH (one in every 500 people in the US have FH), their child has a 1 in 4 chance of inheriting a much rarer but especially dangerous FH called, Homozygous FH. In this kind of FH, the child inherits the FH gene from both parents. Children with homozygous FH have little, if any, ability to remove cholesterol from their blood and will have LDL levels that are usually greater than twice as high or more than their parent's levels. (Typically, the LDL level is greater than 700.)
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