Plasma high-density lipoprotein cholesterol concentrations determined after removal of other lipoproteins by heparin/manganese precipitation or by ultracentrifugation.

The widely used heparin/MnCl2 precipitation procedure for determination of plasma high-density lipoprotein cholesterol has been re-examined in light of recent reports that isolated preparations of the lipoprotein are only partly precipitated under the test conditions. In the present study, the procedure as applied to plasma tolerated rather wide variations in heparin and MnCl2 concentrations without significant effects on the assayed values in several plasma pools tested. The procedure was further tested on 129 individual samples by comparison with an ultracentrifugal method in which high-density lipoprotein-cholesterol is assumed to be represented by the cholesterol content of the plasma fraction of relative (to water) density greater than 1.063. Our results indicate that high-density lipoprotein is not precipitated under the test conditions when applied to unfractionated plasma.