[Discussion] the ALT advice in here is 2 years out of date
the ALT advice in here is 2 years out of date. Making the case below, and I expect to lose some of it in the comments. To save the first four comments: 2 years. My ApoB moved and I spent a fortnight convinced I knew why. The repeat six weeks later was back in range and I had changed nothing. Tracked triglycerides…
Why so many single values look alarming and turn out to be nothing.
A reference interval is built to contain about 95% of a healthy reference population, so one test in twenty falls outside one by construction. Add biological variation, assay imprecision, fasting state and time of day, and a genuinely stable person will produce occasional out-of-range results.
That is why repeat testing before acting is standard. Regression to the mean handles most of it. None of which means an out-of-range value should be ignored — it means it should be repeated and taken to somebody who can put it in context, which is emphatically not a ranked feed.
ApoB is the one worth adding if you only add one
Compared two draws across two labs and spent a week worrying before finding out the assays were different.
nothing on this board interprets your results for you
That is a non-fasting value and the interval you are comparing it against is a fasting one.
ask whether the lab changed its assay between your two draws
Added ApoB to the panel after a thread here. It told me something the standard lipid panel had been hiding.
Have you taken this to whoever ordered it?