Lipids, Apolipoproteins, and Vascular Disease: What to Measure?

To assess vascular disease risk conferred by serum lipids, we typically measure fasting levels of total cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), and triglycerides, and the laboratory calculates low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) from the other results. However, an alternative is to measure only total cholesterol and HDL (neither measurement requires fasting); subtracting HDL from total cholesterol yields the so-called non-HDL cholesterol, which roughly parallels LDL. Less commonly measured predictors are apolipoproteins (apo) A1 and B.

To investigate the capacity of these markers to predict vascular risk, researchers collapsed 68 long-term studies of lipids and vascular disease, mostly from Europe and North America…