Oman cascade screening in familial hypercholesterolemia index (Oryx)

Familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) is a common genetic disorder with an estimated prevalence for heterozygous FH (HeFH) between 1/200-500 and for homozygous FH (HoFH) between 1 in 160,000-300,000 in the general population. Patients with FH are at 2.5 to 10 fold risk for developing (coronary heart disease), CHD compared to patients with no FH, but when FH is diagnosed and treated early in life, this risk is reduced by ~80%. However, the majority of persons with FH have never been diagnosed or treated effectively. Family cascade screning of individual with FH using clinical, genetic or both models is cost effetive as shown by many studies. FH may have a higher prevalence in Oman than in the Western world and this could be due to high practice of consanguineous marriages, which is estimated to be around 50-55% of marriages. The main objective of this study is to initiate early detection and treatment of FH in Oman through detection of index cases and casade screning of first-degree relatives to prevent caediovascular diseases (CVD) outocmes.