Abstract
Objective: We examined the utility of lipoprotein profiling by gel permeation HPLC in screening for metabolic syndrome (MS) and lifestyle diseases in medical examinations.
Subjects and Methods: Our subjects were 100 males (aged 53±7) who underwent health check-ups at Shizuoka Medical Center. Cholesterol levels in lipoprotein subclasses were measured on an analytical service provider’s HPLC system (®LipoSEARCH) at Skylight Biotech Inc. (Akita, Japan). We examined the usefulness of the lipoprotein index for distinguishing the MS group through correlation analysis between HPLC lipoprotein profiles and 80 health evaluation items, ROC analysis and 2×2 contingency tables.
Results: Obesity, high blood pressure, glucose intolerance, liver dysfunction and inflammation were significantly positively correlated with large and medium VLDL-C, very small LDL-C, very small HDL-C, and significantly negatively correlated with large HDL-C. On the other hand, adiponectin was inversely correlated with these lipoprotein subclasses. In discriminating the moderate MS group with 2 or more risk factors from no MS risk group, the HPLC index very small LDL-C/large HDL-C ratio (cut-off value 2.7, average + 1SD of no MS risk group) was superior to the conventional index LDL-C/HDL-C ratio (cut off value 2.5), odds ratio (5.71 vs 3.66 ) and had greater sensitivity (0.57 vs 0.46). In case of the MS group with 3 or more risk factors (the active support group), the HPLC index was superior to the conventional index in sensitivity (0.75 vs 0.64).
Conclusion: We found HPLC lipoprotein profiling to be very useful in making the assessment of “mibyou”, (illness-free clinical state) as well as in health check-ups focused on MS. This was because of the specific and characteristic correlations observed between HPLC profiles and lifestyle factors such as drinking, smoking and eating habits, as well as MS risk markers.
