Serum Lipid Profile Constituents as Markers of Cardiovascular Morbidity in Patients on Chronic Hemodialysis

We designed the present case-control study in order to examine the validity of apolipoprotein (apo) A-I, B, apoB/apoA-I ratio and Lp(a) as alternative markers of cardiovascular morbidity in end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients undergoing chronic hemodialysis (HD). Twenty-five HD patients (18 males, mean age 63, range 52-69 years) comprised the group with prevalent cardiovascular disease (CVD) and 50 HD patients (35 males, mean age 62, range 40-77 years) with non evident cardiovascular disease history constituted the second study group. Patients with CVD had significantly higher concentrations of serum apoB, apoB/apoA-I ratio and Lp(a), and lower levels of apoA-I compared to patients without incident CVD. All three parameters studied were correlated with cardiovascular morbidity, i.e. apoA-I negatively and apoB and apoB/apoA-I ratio positively (r = -0.6, P < 0.05; r = 0.659, P < 0.01; and r = 0.614, P < 0.01, respectively). Furthermore, logCRP exhibited as well a significant positive correlation with cardiovascular morbidity (r = 0.704, P < 0.001), not this being the case for Lp(a) which was not found to exhibit such a correlation (r = 0.05, P = NS). Among them, apoB and apoB/apoA-I ratio exhibited the characteristics most coherent to CVD. The age- and sex-adjusted OR for the presence of CVD was 2.3 and 2.0, respectively, which remained independent of any confounding effect of inflammation. In conclusion, serum apoB levels and apoB/apoA-I ratio exhibit characteristics of credible independent markers of in HD patients.