Non-fasting lipid profiles are recommended for most patients, including for cardiovascular risk assessment, according to a joint statement published by the European Atherosclerosis Society and European Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine April 26 in the European Heart Journal. The panel recommendations are expected to improve patient compliance with lipid testing, while laboratory flagging of abnormal values, based on desirable concentration cut-points, rather than by reference intervals, is called for. Traditionally, lipid profiles have been measured using samples collected after fasting for at least eight hours, which does not reflect the daily average plasma lipid and lipoprotein concentrations and associated risk of cardiovascular disease, since most people are in a non-fasting state for the majority of the day. Recently, though, “extensive” evidence show that changes in lipid and lipoprotein protein levels after a meal are only “modest” and not clinically significant for triglycerides, total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol or calculated remnant cholesterol, while concentrations of HDL cholesterol, apolipoprotein A1 and B, and lipoprotein(a) are not affected by fasting status. “Numerous prospective cohorts have found significant associations for non-fasting lipids, lipoproteins, and apolipoproteins with cardiovascular disease risk, and several landmark clinical trials of statin therapy have used non-fasting lipids for trial […]