Contribution of Lp (a) to the Occurrence of Vascular Diseases : Correlation of Several Risk Factors Including Diabetes Mellitus

: We demonstrated that Lp(a) levels in patients with arteriosclerosis obliterans (21.4 +/- 2.5 mg/dl) and in patients with ischemic heart disease (17.2 +/- 0.8 mg/dl) are higher than those in controls (15.4 +/- 0.7 mg/dl) or healthy controls (11.3 +/- 1.1 mg/dl). Lp(a) levels in patients with these vascular diseases were especially higher when there were known atherosclerotic risk factors such as diabetes mellitus, hypercholesterolemia or hypertension, although Lp(a) levels in patients with these risk-positive group was not different from that of control. These results suggest that Lp(a) contributes to the development of atherosclerotic vascular diseases especially when known atherosclerotic risk factors are not present. We also investigated the case of thromboangiitis obliterans, which is believed to develop from nonatherosclerotic mechanisms, and found that Lp(a) levels were higher (26.5 +/- 9.6 mg/dl) in such patients.