How do conventional markers of lipid disorders compare with apolipoproteins?

Assessment of risk for coronary heart disease (CHD) indicates that apolipoprotein B and apolipoprotein A-I and their ratio are efficient predictors, possibly superior to hitherto used indicators, i.e. S-Cholesterol, S-Triglycerides, S-HDL cholesterol and S-LDL cholesterol. We used the ratio S-Apolipoprotein B/S-Apolipoprotein A-I as the gold standard to compare the diagnostic performance of the other properties based on consecutive routine measurements in patients attending primary health-care or a university hospital. The different cut-offs of the S-Apolipoprotein B/S-Apolipoprotein A-I ratio that were investigated created a prevalence of risk factors that might require intervention in the study group between 10 and 77%. The gender difference prompts for a partitioning related to the gender, whereas the changes related to age were small and were disregarded. The diagnostic sensitivity and specificity were demonstrated in ROC diagrams for the studied properties.