Determination of low density lipoprotein particle size by polyacrylamide gradient gel electrophoresis in patients with coronary artery stenosis

Many studies have recently shown that coronary artery disease (CAD) risk was increased 2 to 3 fold in patients with small dense LDL (sdLDL). Therefore, the aim of this study was the evaluation of LDL particle size in patients with coronary artery stenosis and healthy individuals. This is a cross-sectional and case-control study. Eighty-six patients with coronary artery stenosis, 35 patients without coronary artery stenosis identified by angiography, and 30 healthy individuals were studied. LDL particle sizes were measured using 2%-16% polyacrylamide gradient gel electrophoresis. All values are expressed as the mean ±SD. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to compare mean values among groups. In this study, mean LDL particle size was significantly smaller in patients with coronary artery stenosis (25.29 nm ± 0.38 nm) than patients without coronary artery stenosis (25.63 nm ± 0.2 nm) and healthy individuals (25.95 nm ± 0.4 nm) (P<0.001). The results of this study have shown that sdLDL can increase the risk of coronary artery stenosis.