The determination of high density lipoprotein cholesterol separated by electrophoresis and sodium phosphotungstate/Mg2+ precipitation: a physical evaluation.

Epidemiologic studies show that the risk of clinically evident atherosclerosis correlates negatively with concentrations of high density lipoprotein (HDL) and the influence of different factors on variations in the concentration of HDL cholesterol. We measured HDL cholesterol by both the electrophoresis and the precipitation method, and then proposed reference intervals for HDL cholesterol, adjusted for age and sex. Our findings show that the HIDL cholesterol concentration was lowest in cord blood. The concentration increased between the ages of 1 to 15 years, but lowered between the ages of 16 to 20 years. After this age period our study shows that the HDL cholesterol levels began to rise again before leveling off between the ages of 21-30 years. There was a significant difference in concentrations of HDL cholesterol between males and females. Our findings also show that the precision of the precipitation method is better than that of the electrophoresis method. The C.V. of the within-run analysis was 4.8% vs. 10.7%, while the C.V. of the between-run analysis was 4.3% vs. 14.6%. However, a significant correlation (r = 0.77) was noted between the precipitation method and electrophoresis. The electrophoresis method can be recommended as an aid in lipoprotein phenotyping, so we suggest it as a routine clinical method for HDL cholesterol analysis.