Fasting Versus Non-Fasting in Assessing Lipid Profile and Complete Blood Picture

Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) is the world’s leading cause of death and represents a serious global health problem. The general recommendations to operators in the prevention of CHD should include complete lipid profile testing, that is Total Cholesterol(TC), Total Triglycerides(TG), High Density Lipoprotein (HDL), Low Density Lipoprotein (LDL) and Very Low Density Lipoprotein (VLDL). Recent recommendations have supported non-fasting lipid assessment. On the other hand, classification of dyslipidemias was derived in fasting samples, and cohort studies and clinical trials have performed fasting assessments. The aim of this study was to evaluate fasting versus non-fasting in measuring lipid profile & complete blood picture. A total of 80 female were divided into four groups of 20 female each. The 1st three groups were fasting for 4, 6,14 hours respectively and the 4^th group was non-fasting. Blood samples were taken from these females for biochemical & hematological investigations. The lipid profile parameters were measured using Synchron CX4 clinical system Beckman Coulter Inc., Brea, CA. Complete Blood Picture was measured by using automated hematological analyzers BC-3000 plus (Hamburg, Germany). Statistical analysis was carried out using SPSS( Statistical Package for Social Sciences) number 22. Biochemically, for TC,TG & VLDL, it was found that fasting 6 , 14 hours gave significant differences (P< 0.05) when compared with non-fasting group while there were non-significant results for the mean level of HDL & LDL between groups . Regarding hematological assessment, there were non-significant differences between groups in measuring Hemoglobin, Red blood cells, White blood cells, Platelet counts. Since non-fasting may weaken the accuracy in diagnosing some forms of hyperlipidemia, we proposed that laboratories & organizations should also offer measurement of fasting triglycerides according to clinical situations , as in the case of very high non-fasting triglyceride concentration.