Nutraceuticals for Cardiovascular Risk Factors Management in Children: An Evidence Based Approach

The cardiovascular prevention represents a hot topic in particular when referred to children or adolescents. Indeed it is demonstrated that atherosclerosis starts early in childhood in the presence of cardiovascular risks factors such as dyslipidemia. It arises precociously when inherited lipoprotein disorders occur as in familial hypercholesterolemia, but not only, or in the presence of a cluster of metabolic changes leading to metabolic syndrome. In these conditions it is mandatory to apply all measures aimed to improve the lipid profile as recommended by international guidelines. Lifestyle is recognized the main basic approach while hypolipidemic drugs should be limited to very high risk children since 8–10 years of age. To comply with the expected LDL-Cholesterol (LDL-C) goal some limitations occur at times then nutraceuticals have been considered in children, as demonstrated beneficial in reducing LDL-C in most of adults. The experience in children is so far very poor since limited randomized controlled trials have been performed including a limited number of subjects. Studies mainly concern Fibre and Phytosterols/stanols and the majority improved lipid profile resulting safe and well tolerated. In this review we synthetize these results including other nutraceuticals as Red Yeast Rice, Omega-3/−6 PUFAs, Probiotic, Soy derivative and Nut.