title: Association of remnant-like particle cholesterol with coronary artery disease in patients with normal total cholesterol levels.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Limited information is available as to whether there is a difference in the association of lipid and fibrinolytic variables with coronary artery disease according to the presence or absence of elevated serum total cholesterol. We examined the levels of various lipid and fibrinolytic variables including remnant-like particle cholesterol (RLP-C). RLP-C is a recently established simple assay method for the estimation of triglyceride-rich lipoprotein remnants.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Levels of total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), triglyceride, lipoprotein(a), RLP-C, uric acid, blood glucose, tissue plasminogen activator, tissue plasminogen activator inhibitor type 1, antithrombin III, and protein C were measured in 208 patients who underwent diagnostic coronary angiograms. Of these 208 patients, 57 were hypercholesterolemic (> or =220 mg/dL) and 151 were normocholesterolemic. HDL-C showed significant differences between patients with and those without angiographically determined coronary artery stenosis in both hypercholesterolemic and normocholesterolemic patients (P =.0025 and P =.0003, respectively). Both RLP-C and uric acid showed significant differences only in the normocholesterolemic subgroup (P =.0006 and P =.0060, respectively). This difference in uric acid was not significant by multivariable analysis. The ratio of RLP-C/HDL-C was demonstrated to be highly significantly (P <.0001) associated with coronary artery stenosis in patients with normal total cholesterol, whereas there was no statistically significant association in the hypercholesterolemic patient subgroup.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our current study disclosed that RLP-C levels are strongly associated with coronary artery disease, especially in patients with normal total cholesterol levels. Moreover, RLP-C/HDL-C ratio may be even more significantly associated with the presence of coronary artery stenosis in normocholesterolemic patients.
authors.affiliation: Division of Internal Medicine, National Mie Central Hospital, Hisai, Japan.
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Masuoka
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kamei
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Wagayama
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ozaki
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kawasaki
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Tanaka
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kitamura
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Katoh
authors.forename: U
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Shintani
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Misaki
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sugawa
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ito
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Nakano
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D002784:Cholesterol / Q000097:blood*; D008076:Cholesterol, HDL; D003327:Coronary Disease / Q000097:blood*; D005342:Fibrinolysis; D006801:Humans; D006937:Hypercholesterolemia / Q000097:blood; D008875:Middle Aged; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D014527:Uric Acid / Q000097:blood
chemical_list: D008076:Cholesterol, HDL; D014527:Uric Acid; D002784:Cholesterol