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Research Communication

Fasting Increases Serum Total Cholesterol, LDL Cholesterol and Apolipoprotein B in Healthy, Nonobese Humans¹

Lars Sävendahl^*,2 and Louis E. Underwood^*

^* Department of Pediatrics, Division of Endocrinology, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7220 and Department of Woman and Child Health, Pediatric Endocrinology Unit Q2:08, Karolinska Institutet, S-171 76 Stockholm, Sweden

²To whom correspondence should be addressed.

Voluntary fasting is practiced by many humans in an attempt to lose body weight. Conflicting results have been published on the effects of food deprivation on serum lipids. To study the effect of acute starvation on serum lipids, 10 nonobese (93–124% of ideal body weight), healthy adults (6 men, 4 women, 21–38 y old) fasted (no energy) for 7 d. Fasting increased total serum cholesterol from 4.90 ± 0.23 to 6.73 ± 0.41 mmol/L (37.3 ± 5.0%; P < 0.0001) and LDL cholesterol from 2.95 ± 0.21 to 4.90 ± 0.36 mmol/L (66.1 ± 6.6%; P < 0.0001). Serum apolipoprotein B (apo B) increased from 0.84 ± 0.06 to 1.37 ± 0.11 g/L (65.0 ± 9.2%; P < 0.0001). The increases in serum cholesterol, LDL and apo B were associated with weight loss. Fasting did not affect serum concentrations of triacylglycerol and HDL cholesterol. Serum concentrations of insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I) decreased from 246 ± 29 (prefast) to 87 ± 10 µg/L after 1 wk of fasting (P < 0.0001). We conclude that, in nonobese subjects, fasting is accompanied by increases in serum cholesterol, LDL and apo B concentrations, whereas IGF-I levels are decreased.

KEY WORDS: • fasting • cholesterol • apolipoprotein B • insulin-like growth factor-I • humans

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