Fatty acid composition in serum among males 4-16 years after myocardial infarction.

In a case-control study we compared men who had suffered a myocardial infarction with age-matched controls free from clinically apparent ischemic heart disease. Our main interest were differences in serum lipid and apolipoprotein concentrations. We found no significant differences between these two populations. The fatty acid composition of the serum cholesterol esters was studied as an indirect measure of the dietary fat quality. There were rather small differences with regard to the fatty acid composition between the survivor cases and the controls suggesting that the quality of the dietary fat was not better among the cases after the myocardial infarction than among the average male in Kiruna. The cases had a significantly higher proportion of palmitoleic acid (16:1 n-7, p < 0.004) than the controls, also after controlling for other biomedical risk factors. A high content of palmitoleic acid may be a marker of increased risk for coronary heart disease.