Clinical significance of measurements of serum apolipoprotein A-I, A-II and B in hypertriglyceridemic male patients with and without coronary artery disease

Abstract

To examine the relationship of hypertriglyceridemia to coronary artery disease (CAD), we measured serum cholesterol, triglyceride, high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) and apolipoproteins (apo) A-I, A-II and B in 82 male patients with angiographically defined CAD and 140 age-matched healthy controls. The CAD patients had significantly lower apo A-I and A-II and HDL-C levels, but had higher apo B and triglyceride levels than the controls. After adjustments of apolipoproteins for serum triglyceride, CAD patients had significantly higher apo B and lower apo A-I and A-II levels than the controls. Discriminant analysis showed that apo B was the best discriminator and that apo A-I was next. In the normotriglyceridemic subgroup HDL-C also had a sufficient power for discrimination between CAD patients and the controls, but in the hypertriglyceridemic subgroup HDL-C had no discriminative power. Both apo A-I and B had significant discriminative power between CAD patients and the controls, independently of the serum triglyceride level. These results indicate that measurements of serum apo A-I and apo B are useful for the study of coronary risk factor in hypertriglyceridemic subjects. Finally, it is necessary to sub-classify dyslipoproteinemia by serum apolipoprotein levels for predicting the future occurrence of CAD in the general population.