Cholesterol is Inefficiently Converted to Cholesteryl Esters in the Blood of Cardiovascular Disease Patients

Shotgun lipidomic analysis of 203 lipids in 13 lipid classes performed on blood plasma of donors who had just suffered an acute coronary syndrome (ACS, n = 74), or an ischemic stroke (IS, n = 21), or who suffer from stable angina pectoris (SAP, n = 78), and an age-matched control cohort (n = 52), showed some of the highest inter-lipid class correlations between cholesteryl esters (CE) and phosphatidylcholines (PC) sharing a common fatty acid. The concentration of lysophospatidylcholine (LPC) and ratios of concentrations of CE to free cholesterol (Chol) were also lower in the CVD cohorts than in the control cohort, indicating a deficient conversion of Chol to CE in the blood plasma in the CVD subjects. A non-equilibrium reaction quotient, Q′, describing the global homeostasis of cholesterol as manifested in the blood plasma was shown to have a value in the CVD cohorts (Q′ACS = 0.217 ± 0.084; Q′IS = 0.201 ± 0.084; Q′SAP = 0.220 ± 0.071) that was about one third less than in the control cohort (Q′Control = 0.320 ± 0.095, p < 1 × 10−4), suggesting its potential use as a rapid predictive/diagnostic measure of CVD-related irregularities in cholesterol homeostasis.

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We thank the nursing staff at the Hospital Santa Cruz, in particular Edite Tomas Mateus and Manuel Belo Costa for their enthusiastic involvement in this project and help in blood collection. This work was supported by iNOVA4Health - UID/Multi/04462/2013, a program financially supported by FCT (Foundation for Science and Technology of the Portuguese Ministry of Science and Higher Education) through national funds and co-funded by FEDER under the PT2020 Partnership, and Programas de Atividades Conjuntas (PAC) (Ref. No 03/SAICT/2015). ND is a holder of PhD fellowship from the FCT (Ref. No: SFRH/BD/51877/2012).