Association between apolipoprotein E-containing HDL-C and coronary heart disease risk: a community-based cohort study

Abstract

Objective: To assess whether apolipoprotein E-containing HDL-C (APOE-HDL-C) is causally associated with coronary heart disease (CHD) risk. Methods: In total, 5 417 cardiovascular disease-free participants at baseline were followed up for up to 10 years in the Chinese Multi-provincial Cohort Study. APOE-HDL-C and HDL-C were measured in all participants. APOE-HDL-C/total HDL-C ratio was calculated. Multivariate Cox regression was employed to assess the association between HDL-C related biomarkers and 10-year CHD incident risk. Results: A total of 100 incident CHD events occurred during a mean 6.8 years follow-up. High levels of baseline HDL-C related biomarkers were significantly negatively associated with incident CHD risk. Comparison with participant with lowest level of APOE-HDL-C/total HDL-C ratio, those with highest level of APOE-HDL-C/total HDL-C ratio had 74% decreased risk of CHD (HR=0.26, 95%CI: 0.12-0.71). The individual with the highest level of APOE-HDL-C/total HDL-C ratio had the lowest absolute risk[0.48% (0.44%-0.52%)] of CHD, which was significantly lower than that [0.83% (0.78%-0.88%)] of the individual with the highest level of HDL-C. Conclusions: Our findings revealed that the APOE-HDL-C/total HDL-C ratio was significantly related to a 10-year increased risk of incident CHD, even beyond HDL-C. It seemed that APOE-HDL-C could serve as a new indicator of the anti-atherosclerotic function of HDL.