Non-fasting triglycerides predict incident acute myocardial infarction among those with favourable HDL-cholesterol: Cohort Norway

to prospectively evaluate the risk of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) associated with non-fasting triglyceride levels.

a health survey of 140,790 Norwegians free of known coronary heart disease at baseline (1994–2003) were followed through December 2009 via record linkages to the Cause of Death Registry and hospital discharge diagnoses in the CVDNOR project, and evaluated in Cox proportional hazards analyses.

a total of 3219 (4.8%) men and 1434 (1.9%) women developed an AMI. Women had a steeper gradient risk with increasing triglyceride decile than men, where the highest (≥2.88 mmol/l) compared to the lowest decile (<0.7 mmol/l) was associated with an age-adjusted 4.7-fold excess risk in women in contrast to a 2.8-fold excess risk in men (interaction term, p < 0.001). A significant at-risk HDL-C (<1.0 mmol/l for men and <1.3 mmol/l for women) by triglyceride interaction term was observed. HRs increased with increasing triglyceride quartile in participants with a favourable HDL-C after multivariable adjustment (p for trend <0.001), but triglycerides did not significantly predict AMI among those with low HDL-C. For those with favourable HDL-C, net reclassification index identified a 10% and 14% improvement in classification for men and women, respectively.

non-fasting triglyceride levels among individuals with favourable HDL-C may help identify a subset of individuals at risk for CHD. Further research is warranted in evaluating non-fasting triglycerides in CHD prediction.