Cholesterol Trades Places Among Countries (1980 v 2018)

choi

Text by Mark Fischetti and graphic by Jen Christiansen, Cholesterol Trades Places; Blood levels drop in the Westbut climb in Asia and Africa. Scientific American, January 2021 (under the heading Graphic Science).
https://www.scientificamerican.c ... -rises-in-the-east/

, which is based on

NCD Risk Factor Collaboration, Repositioning of the Global Epicentre of Non-Optimal Cholesterol. Nature, 582: 73 (June 3, 2020)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2338-1
("The largest increases were found in east Asian countries (for example, China) and southeast Asian countries (for example, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia and Lao PDR). * * * China, which had one of the lowest mean non-HDL cholesterol levels in 1980, reached or surpassed non-HDL cholesterol levels of many high-income western countries in 2018")

Note:
(a)
(i) The author is "NCD Risk Factor Collaboration," where NCD stands for "non-communicable disease" and which includes researchers from China and Taiwan.  
(ii) Data for each individual country are found in Supplementary information (that can be found in either the Sections of the table (of contents) to the right of text, or at the bottom of the text (clicking the former will bring you to the latter).
(b) Caption of Figure 4 stated, "One mmol l−1 is equivalent to 38.61 mg dl−1."
(c)
(i) For normal range adjusted by age, see
Lipid Panel, Standard. Quest Diagnostics, undated
https://testdirectory.questdiagn ... -standard?cc=MASTER
("Fasting is not required prior to collection of a lipid panel. * * * Total Cholesterol <200; Non-HDL Cholesterol (calc[ulated])  ≥20 Years  <130")

The unit in the quotation is mg/dL (dL can be written as "dl," where deci means a tenth); the normal ranges shown are for both (American) men and women.

To read Scientific American article easily, 130 mg/dL = 3.37 mmol l−1  (divided by 38.61; the unit mmol l−1 means, as shown in the graphic of Scientific American article, "millimoles per liter").
(ii) Quest Diagnostics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quest_Diagnostics
(founded in 1967 and the name Quest since 1996; Headquarters  Secaucus, New Jersey [across Hudson River from Manhattan])
(d) Salim S Virani, Non-HDL Cholesterol as a Metric of Good Quality of Care. Texas Heart Institute Journal 38: 160 (2011).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3066801/
("Paying attention to non-HDL-C may obviate the need for expensive tests that measure LDL particle number, total apo B concentration, or LDL phenotype (type A or B). This has the potential of improving patient care without increasing the cost to the healthcare system")
(i) Texas Heart Institute is a non-profit hospital for cardiology and heart surgery in Houston.
(ii) Figure 1 show that non-HDL cholesterol includes low-density lipoprotein (LDL), very-low-density lipoprotein (VLDL), intermediate-density lipoprotein (IDL) and lipoprotein (a), all of which contains both bad cholesterol. The first three contain (bad) triglycerides also, but not lipoprotein (a).
(iii) Full name being apolipoprotein B, Apo B is a protein encoded by a gene,, and found in LDL, VLDL, IDL and lipoprotein (a) -- but not in HDL (high-density lipoprotein, which carries good cholesterol and tries to remove bad cholesterol from atherosclerotic plaques on blood vessels.