Serum lipids, hypertension and coronary artery disease

Abstract

The serum lipids were measured in 115 patients who had suffered a myocardial infarction at least ten days previously and in 397 apparently healthy men of various ages. All persons studied were in the postabsorptive state. A smaller number of normal women and women who had suffered a coronary attack was also investigated. A few persons with diabetes were considered separately. Serum triglyceride concentrations were increased above 5.4 mEq./L. in 5 per cent of seventy-three normal men twenty to twenty-nine years of age, in 36 per cent of 325 normal men aged thirty and over, and in 82 per cent of all patients with coronary artery disease. High serum cholesterol concentrations or hypertension appeared to increase the risk of coronary disease in persons with high serum triglycerides, but by themselves seemed to carry little risk. An exception was the occurrence of high serum cholesterol without high serum triglycerides in a small number of patients with coronary artery disease under age fifty. At all ages, however, the vast majority of patients exhibited an increase in serum triglyceride concentration as the most characteristic abnormality.