Endocrine Abstracts

Backgroud: Increased lipoprotein (a) {Lp(a)} concentrations are associated with cardiovascular disease. Whether type 2 diabetes increase the level of Lp(a) still controversial. We studied the level of Lp(a) in health and type 2 diabetes Thai subjects and studied the relationship between Lp(a) and metabolic factors in both groups

Methods: The study included 180 normal glucose tolerance healthy subjects that have age and sex matched with 180 type 2 diabetes patients. All participants were fasting for 10–12 hours at night and have blood samples for Lp(a), total cholesterol, triglyceride, HDL-C, LDL-C, BUN, Cr, FBS, HbA1c. Lp(a) was measured by rate nephelometry methods with the immunochemistry systems. The coefficient of variance of Lp(a) were 3.4 and 6.4% for intra and interassay variability, respectively.

Results: The mean age of diabetic subjects was 60.8 ± 11.5 years and 55% was male that were not statistically different from the healthy control. All subjects had blood creatinine level less than 2 mg/dl. Mean HbA1c of diabetes subjects was 7.5 ± 0.9%. The mean Lp(a) level was 23.6 mg/dl in control and 22.8 mg/dl in diabetes subjects that is no statistically different (NS). The median Lp(a) was 16.3 and 14.0 in control and diabetes subjects respectively (NS). The percentage of subjects who had Lp(a) more than 30 mg/dl was 26.1% and 25.0% in control and diabetes subjects respectively (NS). The total cholesterol and LDL-C level are no statistically different between control and type 2 diabetes subjects. The diabetes subjects had higher triglyceride level than control (156.6 ± 69.1 vs 126.8 ± 39.7 mg/dl) and lower HDL-C level than control (42.8 ± 12.4 vs 52 ± 12.8 mg/dl). The correlation between log Lp(a) and other factors include age, sex, lipid profile, fasting plasma glucose, HbA1c and creatinine was studied by spearman rank in both diabetic and control subjects. There was significant negative correlation with serum triglyceride in both diabetes and normal subjects and there was only significant positive correlation with HDL-C cholesterol in healthy subjects. The other factors were not significant correlated with log Lp(a).

Conclusions: Lp(a) level in type 2 diabetes were not different from healthy subjects. Lp(a) in both type 2 diabetes and healthy subjects had negative correlation with serum triglyceride level.