Fasting versus nonfasting triglycerides and the prediction of cardiovascular risk: do we need to revisit the oral triglyceride tolerance test?

摘要

Historically, triglycerides have been measured in the fasting state for 2 reasons. First, because of the marked increase in triglycerides after fat ingestion, the variability in triglyceride measurements is much smaller in the fasting state. Second, before the availability of direct assays for LDL cholesterol (LDL-C), estimation of LDL-C was performed in clinical practice almost exclusively by use of the Friedewald equation, which requires that both the HDL-C concentration and the fasting triglyceride concentration divided by 5 be subtracted from the total cholesterol concentration.