Comparison of direct assay and friedewald formula for determination of LDL cholesterol

Cardiovascular diseases are a veritable public health problem worldwide. Its diagnosis and monitoring require among other things the determination of serum LDL cholesterol levels. For this, two methods of determination are often used: direct measurement and the Friedewald equation. The Friedewald formula is commonly used especially where the reference method is unavailable for technical and financial reasons. We investigated lipid status in one hundred subjects comparing the enzymatic method and LDL cholesterol estimation using the Friedewald formula. The MultiQC 6.0 software and Student’s test were used to analyse the results and P < 0.05 was considered to be statistically significant. Correlation with two methods was satisfactory with only a few discordant results. However, Friedewald equation always keeps its usefulness in our resource limited countries.