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Does ApoB go up with age?

By GyroscopeUpdated November 15, 20265 sources

It tends to. Through young adulthood ApoB rises about 0.5 mg/dL a year on average, the 2026 US guideline says, and it adds that this normal rise “should not be perceived as optimal”. The goals are the same at 25 and at 65. For women, ApoB also jumps in the year either side of the last period.

Half a point a year

Half a point sounds like nothing. Over 20 years it’s about 10 points, which is more than halving saturated fat took off in a four-week feeding trial.

It’s like gaining a pound a year. Almost everyone does something like it, and nobody would call the result their ideal weight.

The young adults who were followed for 25 years

CARDIA is a US study that signed up young adults aged 18 to 30 and kept checking on them. In 2,794 of them, the average ApoB at a mean age of 25 was already about 91 mg/dL.

Twenty-five years later, the researchers scanned their hearts for calcium, an early sign of plaque. Compared with the third who’d had the lowest ApoB as young adults, the middle third had 1.53 times the odds of calcium and the top third 2.28 times, after the usual risk factors were taken into account. People whose ApoB was high while their LDL was low had 1.55 times the odds too.

Why the goals don’t move

The goals depend on your risk, and the guideline doesn’t loosen them as you get older. The best US table of ApoB, from 12,696 untreated adults in the national health survey, isn’t split by age or sex, so the hundred beads compare you with all adults together.

Around menopause

In SWAN, 1,054 women had a checkup every year as they went through menopause. Total cholesterol, LDL and ApoB were the only heart risk factors that jumped in the year before and the year after the final period, beyond what age alone explained. Why did my ApoB go up after menopause? has what to do about the timing.