[Measurement of triglycerides in capillary blood: validation against whole blood measurement].

Background And Objective: Elevated plasma triglycerides (TG) are an independent cardiovascular risk factor and a part of metabolic and postprandial syndromes. Capillary analysis of TG would facilitate the recognition of those abnormalities. The aim of the present study was to assess the concordance between TG values measured in capillary (Accutrend GCT Roche Diagnostics) and total blood.

Patients And Methods: Total blood and capillary TG were analyzed in 50 subjects without cardiovascular disease.

Results: Mean capillary TG were higher than total blood TG (116.5mg/dl vs 86.0mg/dl; P<.001); a good correlation between both methods was obtained (r=0.95; P<.001).

Conclusions: in this cohort of consecutive unselected subjects we found that capillary TG measurement correlates well with total blood analysis and that there are significant differences between men and women. We propose regression equations to estimate blood TG from capillary measurements: men: capillary TG X 0,837; women: capillary TG X 0,698.