Prediction of cholesterol ratios within a Korean population

Cholesterol ratios (total cholesterol (TC)/high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-c) and triglyceride (TG)/HDL-c) have been suggested as better indicators to predict various clinical features such as insulin resistance and heart disease. Therefore, we aimed to build a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) set to predict constitutional lipid metabolism. The genotype data of 7795 samples were obtained from the Korea Association Resource. Among the total of 7795 samples, 7016 subjects were used to perform 10-fold cross-validation. We selected the SNPs that showed significance constantly throughout all 10 cross-validation sets; another 779 samples were used as the final validation set. After performing the 10-fold cross-validation, the six SNPs (rs4420638 (APOC1), rs12421652 (BUD13), rs17411126 (LPL), rs6589566 (ZPR1), rs16940212 (LOC101928635) and rs10852765 (ABCA8)) were finally selected for predicting cholesterol ratios. The weighted genetic risk scores (wGRS) were calculated based on the regression slopes of the six selected SNPs. Our results showed upward trends of wGRS for both the TC/HDL-c and TG/HDL-c ratios within the 10-fold cross-validation. Similarly, the wGRS of the six SNPs also showed upward trends in analyses using the SNP selection set and final validation set. The selected six SNPs can be used to explain both the TC/HDL-c and TG/HDL-c ratios. Our results may be useful for the prospective predictions of cholesterol-related diseases.