hi cimart,

From what I could see, the home cholesterol test is about 97% accurate. You get two tests in the one kit. It measures ONLY the total cholesterol.

It could be useful to let you know a baseline figure where you're at. If it's a nice low normal result, rejoice! If you get a high result .. well, you have no way to know what part of it is high. It could be that your HDL is high .. that's the "good" cholesterol, and you WANT it to be higher. Plus, the test doesn't measure triglycerides, and that is more of an indicator of heart disease risk.

Apparently there's another "home" kit you can buy ... you take the blood yourself with a little finger-prick, just like a diabetic uses for checking blood sugars. You send off the packet to a lab (the cost includes postage, etc) and they guarantee the results AND it includes all of the blood lipid values, not just total cholesterol. It costs about twice as much as the other.

My personal thought would be to go for the simple home test. If the result is low and normal, yay ... and you get a second test, so you can check again in a few months. If you get a high result, well ... then you can look at having a more accurate check of all the blood lipid levels.

Doreen