Chronic kidney disease induced dysfunction of high density lipoprotein
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Updated: May 8, 2026

Assessment of Vascular Function in Patients With Chronic Kidney Disease
Published on: June 16, 2014
Suguru Yamamoto1, Valentina Kon
1Department of Clinical Nephroscience, Niigata University Graduate School of Medical and Dental Sciences, Niigata, Japan.
Insights
Cardiovascular disease risk in chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients on dialysis is high. Abnormalities in high-density lipoprotein (HDL) function, not just quantity, may explain this increased risk.
Area of Science:
- Nephrology
- Cardiology
- Biochemistry
Background:
- Traditional cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors inadequately explain the high CVD burden in chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients, especially those on dialysis.
- Patients with end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) on dialysis exhibit limited cardiovascular benefits from standard lipid-lowering therapies, indicating a significant residual risk.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the role of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) quantity and functionality in the residual cardiovascular risk observed in patients with chronic kidney disease.
- To explore how chronic kidney disease impacts the composition and functional capabilities of HDL particles.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of HDL composition and functionality in patients with chronic kidney disease.
- Assessment of cholesterol acceptor function and inflammatory effects associated with HDL in the CKD population.
- Evaluation of the correlation between HDL abnormalities and residual cardiovascular risk.
Main Results:
- Chronic kidney disease significantly alters HDL composition and impairs its functionality, including cholesterol efflux capacity and anti-inflammatory properties.
- These HDL abnormalities in CKD patients do not consistently correlate with each other, suggesting distinct underlying mechanisms.
- HDL quantity alone does not fully account for the heightened cardiovascular risk in this cohort.
Conclusions:
- Aberrant HDL functionality, beyond mere quantity, is a critical contributor to the exaggerated cardiovascular risk in patients with chronic kidney disease on dialysis.
- Distinct mechanistic pathways underlie the various functional impairments of HDL in CKD.
- Targeting specific HDL functional defects offers a promising novel therapeutic strategy for mitigating cardiovascular risk in CKD patients.
Abstract:
Traditional risk factors do not account for increased cardiovascular disease in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD), particularly individuals whose CKD has progressed to end-stage kidney disease requiring dialysis. CKD patients on dialysis show little to no cardiovascular benefits from lipid-lowering therapy and thus have an exaggerated residual cardiovascular risk. High density lipoprotein (HDL) quantity and functionality may explain some of the residual risk. CKD affects the composition and disrupts the functionality of HDL, including cholesterol acceptor function and inflammatory effects. Notably, although these HDL abnormalities prevail in CKD, they do not track together and thereby support the idea of separate and distinct mechanistic pathways for each critical function of HDL. Targeting individual perturbations in HDL function represents a novel approach to therapy in this population.
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