mgdL

mg/dL (milligrams per deciliter) is a unit of mass concentration commonly used in clinical chemistry to express the amount of a substance in a deciliter (100 milliliters) of blood or other body fluids. It is a non-SI unit, with 1 mg/dL equal to 0.01 g/L. In practice, mg/dL is widely used in the United States and in many clinical laboratories for reporting concentrations such as glucose, cholesterol, triglycerides, and various drugs or biomarkers.

In clinical practice, mg/dL is used to report values for glucose, total cholesterol, LDL and HDL cholesterol, triglycerides, and several other analytes measured in blood or plasma. Laboratories may report results in mg/dL or convert them to SI units (millimoles per liter, mmol/L) depending on regional guidelines and the test. The numerical value represents the same quantity, simply expressed in a different unit.

Conversions to mmol/L require the substance’s molar mass. The general relation is mmol/L = (mg/dL) × 10 / M, where M is the molar mass in g/mol. For glucose (M ≈ 180.16 g/mol), 1 mg/dL ≈ 0.0555 mmol/L. For cholesterol (M ≈ 386.65 g/mol), 1 mg/dL ≈ 0.0259 mmol/L. For triglycerides (effective M ≈ 885 g/mol, since triglycerides are complex molecules), 1 mg/dL ≈ 0.0113 mmol/L. These factors yield approximately 38.7 mg/dL per 1 mmol/L for cholesterol and about 88.6 mg/dL per 1 mmol/L for triglycerides.

Overall, mg/dL remains a common reporting unit in many clinical settings, with conversions to mmol/L applied for international comparisons and guideline alignment.