A study was made of the relationship between aortic pulse wave velocity (PWV) in terms of the degree of arteriosclerosis as observed non-invasively from vascular properties and hyperlipidemia a risk factor in arteriosclerosis. Subjects were a total of 317 cases (male 158 and female 159) with hyperlipidemia, hypertension, cerebral vascular disease, ischemic heart disease, diabetes melitus and others with an average age of 64.1 years. Serum lipids determined were 8 kinds of total cholesterol (TC), β-lipoprotein (β-LP), triglyceride (TG), free fatty acid (FFA), cholesterol ester (CHO-E), lipid peroxide (LPO), HDL-cholesterol (HDL-C) and phospho lipid (PL). PWV was 7.5, 8.4, 9.1, 10.2 and 11.5m/sec for the age level of 40, 50, 60, 70 and 80 years, respectively, with increasing means and deviations with ageing. TC, β-LP, TG, CHO-E and PL showed tendencies of high contents for the age-levels of 50, 60 and 70 years and low for those of 40 and 80 years, while HDL-C, FFA and LPO showed no constant tendencies for each of these age-levels. Correlation by age-level “r” between PWV values and serum lipids was 0.18 for CHO-E at the age level of 60 years, -0.21 for HDL-C at that of 50 years, 0.21 for TC at that of 60 years, 0.24 for PL at that of 60 years, 0.25 for LPO at that of 60 years, 0.25 for FFA at that of 60 years, 0.25 for β-LP at that of 50 years, 0.41 for FFA at that of 50 years and 0.47 for TG at that of 50 years, thus being observed between age-level of 50 years and that of 60 years. No correlation was observed at the age-levels of 40, 70 and 80 years between PWV values and serum lipid values. This seemed to be due to organic arteriosclerotic lesions caused at the age-levels of 50 and 60 years by hyperlipidemia as a result of lipid dysmetabolism observed at the age-level of 40 years.
