Abstract
To prevent the development of atherosclerotic diseases, the Japanese guideline for prevention of atherosclerotic cardiovascular diseases (released from Japan Atherosclerosis Society in 2007) is clinically referred. In addition, the importance of evaluating not only the level but also the quality of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) has been advocated. Small dense LDL (sdLDL) is regarded as representation of the quality of LDL. With the LipoprintTM LDL subfraction system, utilizing non-denaturing polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis method which can evaluate several sdLDL-related parameters such as the area percentage of sdLDL, mean LDL particle size (mean LDL-PS), relative mobility in the form of the relative flotation rate (Rf), and LDL size-based phenotypic patterns. We attempted to assess the Japanese guideline for prevention of atherosclerotic cardiovascular diseases in terms of sdLDL-related parameters. We studied with 46 asymptomatic and cardiovascular disease-free dyslipidemic subjects (23 men, aged 30-58 years olds; 23 women, 31-58 years olds), who were within the primary prevention level. From the increased number of categories in the guideline, the following trends were observed; the smaller LDL-PS (p=0.002), the larger of area percentage of sdLDL (p=0.042), an increase in Rf (p=0.068), and an increase in the presence of pattern B (atherogenic phenotype) (p=0.031). These results suggested that, with the LipoprintTM system, the usage of Japanese guideline may clinically reflect well the sdLDL-related parameters, in particular the mean LDL-PS, the area percentage of sdLDL and the pattern B.
