ELEVATED LOW-DENSITY LIPOPROTEIN-CHOLESTEROL IN WOMEN WITH POLYCYSTIC-OVARY-SYNDROME

Previous studies have indicated that women with the polycystic ovary s yndrome (PCOS) ave affected by hypertriglyceridemia and low high-densi ty lipoprotein-cholesterol (HDL-C) level. However, most of these studi es did not control for confounding factors such as body mass index (BM I) or differences in ethnicity. Therefore, we compared the lipid data for 26 women with PCOS with those for 1428 female control participants of the Prospective Cardiovascular Munster (PRO-CAM) study who did not use hormonal contraceptives and were of similar age. Data were adjust ed for age, BMI and ethnicity. Women with PCOS had higher total choles terol (5.55 +/- 1.24 vs. 4.99 +/- 0.88 mmol/l, p < 0.05) and low-densi ty lipoprotein-cholesterol (LDL-C) levels (3.61 +/- 1.19 vs. 3.08 +/- 0.82 mmol/l, p < 0.05) than the control subjects. Compared with the wo men in the control population, those with PCOS more frequently had tri glyceride levels exceeding 2.3 mmol/l (11.5 vs. 1.6%, p < 0.001), LDL- C levels exceeding 4.2 mmol/l (30.8 vs. 12.1, p < 0.01), and HDL-C lev els below 4.2 mmol/l (46.2 vs. 15.3%, p < 0.001). We conclude that dys lipidemia is found more frequently in women with PCOS, independently o f the excess weight that is often found in this patient group.