Remnant-like particles cholesterol is higher in diabetic patients with coronary artery disease

Diabetes mellitus (DM) has been well known to be one of the risk factors of coronary artery disease (CAD). Recently, remnant-like particles cholestero l (RLP-C) has been reported to be associated with CAD. However, few studies reported the association of RLP-C level with CAD in subjects with DM. To i nvestigate the effects of presence or absence of DM on the association betw een RLP-C and CAD, we compared the RLP-C level in 142 male patients with CA D and 123 male subjects without CAD (non-CAD), including 44 and 38 DM patie nts, respectively. RLP-C was significantly higher in CAD than non-CAD (P<.0 5). RLP-C and RLP-C/plasma-triglyceride (TG) ratio in CAD with DM were high er than CAD without DM (P<.01, P<.05), and non-CAD with DM (P<.001, P<.05). There was positive correlation between RLP-C and plasma-TG in non-CAD with out DM (r=.44, P<.01), non-CAD with DM (r=.56, P<.001), CAD without DM (r=. 81, P<.0001), and CAD with DM (r=.75, P<.001). After excluding the hypertri glyceridemic patients (>200mg/dL), RLP-C/plasma-TG ratio was significantly higher in CAD with DM than CAD without DM (P<.001) and non-CAD with DM (P<. 05). These results suggest that increased RLP-C to plasma-TG may be associa ted with CAD in middle-aged diabetic male subjects. Copyright (C) 2001 by W .B. Saunders Company.