{"id":2265,"date":"2012-08-06T09:47:31","date_gmt":"2012-08-06T08:47:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zoeharcombe.com\/?p=2265"},"modified":"2016-07-25T20:20:43","modified_gmt":"2016-07-25T19:20:43","slug":"cholesterol-what-does-the-blood-cholesterol-test-actually-measure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zoeharcombe.com\/2012\/08\/cholesterol-what-does-the-blood-cholesterol-test-actually-measure\/","title":{"rendered":"Cholesterol – what does the blood cholesterol test actually measure?"},"content":{"rendered":"
This post is dedicated to Mat Cooke who asked a great question!<\/p>\n
Cholesterol targets for USA, Australia and UK<\/strong><\/p>\n The world is obsessed with cholesterol levels. The UK and Australia work in mmol\/l and the USA works in mg\/dl. Americans are told to have a total cholesterol level below 200 mg\/dl and LDL below 100 mg\/dl. These guidelines, issued by the National Cholesterol Education Programme<\/a>, actually call LDL ‘cholesterol’, which is ignorant as we will see shortly.\u00a0 Appendix 1 has the drug industry conflicts of interest of the committee members setting these USA targets, just in case you thought that they had been set independently, with your health interests at heart, rather than in conflict, with drug industry profits in mind.<\/p>\n Australians are told total blood cholesterol levels <\/a>above 5.5 mmol\/l “are an indication of a greatly increased risk of developing coronary heart disease<\/em>“.<\/p>\n Did you know that the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) has not<\/em> issued cholesterol targets for the UK? NICE is the evidence based body for the UK and this summary states<\/a>: “A target for total cholesterol or low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol is not recommended for primary prevention of cardiovascular disease<\/em>.” The basis for recommendation is summarised as follows: “The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) does not recommend the use of target levels of cholesterol for people taking statins for primary prevention of cardiovascular disease. This is because it found no clinical trials in primary prevention that have evaluated the relative and absolute benefits of achieving different cholesterol targets in relation to clinical events<\/em>.”<\/p>\n