Plasma Lipids in Coronary Heart Disease

Abstract

Plasma lipids—cholesterol, triglycerides, and phospholipids—were studied in several groups of men suffering from coronary heart disease and in two control groups of healthy men. The fasting and particularly the non-fasting triglyceride/cholesterol ratio was elevated 4 weeks after infarction. In patients with an old infarction or with angina pectoris of long standing, the fasting mean triglycerides, adjusted to a common cholesterol level, exceeded the mean triglycerides of healthy men by from 1 to 49 mg/100 ml. Depending on the way in which patients and controls are selected, triglycerides or cholesterol may be the better discriminator. Samples taken 2 hours after breakfast—if we disregard the group examined 4 weeks after an infarction—did not show significant differences between patients and controls with respect to triglycerides adjusted to a common cholesterol level. The results achieved in patients with old infarctions hardly support the contention that triglycerides are more regularly elevated than cholesterol.