National study of lipids in coronary patients

: Although coronary atherosclerosis is considered to have several etiologic factors there is little doubt that elevated plasmatic cholesterol level is the main one. The present study was carried out because of the lack of information concerning cholesterol, lipoproteins and triglycerides levels in the coronary population in Argentina. Patients were selected on the basis of a demonstrated coronary atherosclerosis, detected either by an abnormal coronary arteriogram or a documented myocardial infarction. Total seric cholesterol (TC), low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) and triglycerides (TG) were determined in a core laboratory. Blood samples were obtained after a 12 hour fasting period. LDL-C was also calculated by the Friedewald formula. Patients were stratified according to sex, age, having or not myocardial infarction, type (Q or non Q wave) and localization of myocardial infarction. A total of 653 patients were included. The mean values obtained were: TC 227 +/- 1.8 mg/dL; LDL-C 153 +/- 1.8 mg/dL; HDL-C 48 +/- 0.4 mg/dL and TG 180 +/- 3.6 mg/dL (expressed as mean +/- SE). Mean values in the male and female subsets are given in Table 1. In women, TC, LDL-C and HDL-C are significantly higher than in men. Cholesterol values according to age are displayed in Table 3. Young people have higher TC and LDL-C mean values than older ones. Different cholesterol levels were not observed when the coronary population in our study was stratified according to the presence or not of previous myocardial infarction (Table 4).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)